That’s one for the green IT market, one for the insurer’s data center. Throughout insurers’ current battle with the global economic recession, organizations have changed the way they evaluate, budget for and deploy green IT, according to senior analyst at Datamonitor, Rhonda Ascierto, who authored a recent report about green IT. “The downturn has also resulted in green IT trends for datacenters, client devices and asset lifecycle management, as well as re-shaped return on investment (ROI) models.”
Datamonitor research shows IT budgets are likely to remain flat in 2009, which means cost-effective green IT is likely to increase in demand. Ascierto’s report, “Can Green IT Bloom in an Economic Downturn,” shows that the global economic downturn presents an ideal time for organizations to deploy green IT solutions. Restricted IT and capital expenditure (capex) budgets demand disciplined spending and IT decision makers can only justify expenditure that will either cut costs or boost efficiency. Green IT is uniquely positioned to satisfy both of these requirements.
The nature of green IT is to consume a minimum amount of resources. The utilization of fewer resources means cost savings for organizations. In the process of consuming fewer resources, green IT solutions often also result in increased efficiency.
Green IT that does not require large capex is particularly attractive to enterprises at this time. This includes virtualization, cloud computing, asset lifecycle management, power management, and datacenter design and layout.
Allstate is taking on the task, as it built a new facility in Rochelle, Ill., that employs a mix of technologies and design elements to markedly reduce energy consumption.
Many of the energy-saving techniques, such as giving the facility a reflective roof to cut down on cooling needs, and making use of large windows for natural lighting, seem more indicative of common sense than technological progress. Yet other decisions, such as making heavy use of virtualization to achieve process density, required more technological forethought. The facility is set to receive LEED Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. Go to http://www.insurancenetworking.com/news/-12420-1.html to read more about INN’s tour of the facility.
Datamonitor predicts that organizations that implement green initiatives, as Allstate has, will be better positioned for growth once the economic recovery takes hold.
As the usage of green IT is spurred by the downturn, Datamonitor believes that green IT and cost-effective IT will become synonymous during the next few years. Already, more organizations appreciate that green IT and cost-effective IT are no longer mutually exclusive. The downturn is likely to take this realization one step further and remove the distinction between green and cost-effective IT. This is not to say that green IT will no longer have relevance in marketing campaigns or as part of organizations’ CSR policies. To the contrary: green IT will become more prolific as organizations continue to seek out cost-effective technologies during the downturn and well beyond.
