Rounding up the Green IT figureheads

Dickerson: If you can show a straight cost saving in the long-term, then people are quite happy to go Green. If you say “go Green” and pay nothing extra then everyone would do it. If you say “go Green” and pay nothing extra for two years, a lot of people would still do it. I don’t think there has been enough research done around the cost savings.

Spiteri: The action of energy optimisation, in some cases, is elected. In other cases the reason data centres are doing this is because they are running out of supply power. We have a roadmap which says you look at the whole thing holistically. You assess what is being demanded on the IT side, best practice and then the infrastructure. All these aspects are shrouded by a thing called Green. What you might see this as corporate citizenship starts to move into policy and then starts to move into regulation. That star rating you see on refrigerators, that will move to infrastructure products too.

Wright: I think the government has already put a stake in the ground in terms of a level of understanding and requirement relative to the IT sector. There is this fundamental level of understanding. The industry needs to be working in conjunction with the government and not responding to some large overbearing government iron fist. I think there is a level of collaborative work that needs to go on and that is the role the industry needs to play with the government. The consumer knows they have got to do something, but they don’t know exactly what that is. I think the IT industry as a whole has a responsibility in terms of education and I think that is the link between the IT industry and corporate responsibility.

CRN: When do you foresee that Green regulations, such as those in Europe, will be enforced in Australia?

Larsen: Our experience is that legislation here in Australia is actually more strict than Europe. We have got a thing called the NGER (National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting) Act here and that affects the big end of town.