What does 2008 hold for green IT?

BusinessGreen offers its top 10 green technology predictions for the year ahead

2007 was a whirlwind year for green technology, and for ethical business in general. What will 2008 bring? BusinessGreen provides 10 predictions for how green thinking in general – and green technology specifically – will evolve over the coming year.

The greenwash will fade
"Both consumers and the press are becoming more jaded about the kinds of green messages that are appearing," says Dan Sutherland, chair of the UK's Green Technology Initiative, who argues that the green rhetoric has become deafening in the past year. As the market gets used to the idea of green investing, now is the time for companies to identify the real opportunities, he says, which will revolve primarily around how to make computing more efficient and cost effective, while delivering environmental friendliness as a side benefit. "What is and isn't green will change over the next 12 months," he concludes.

Companies will begin using IT to turn other parts of the business green
If 2007 was the year of greener IT, then 2008 will be the year of the greener company, says Lawrence Surtees, IDC Canada's vice president and principal analyst for communications research – and IT will be the tool to help businesses get there. Surtees says that many companies are still failing to take advantage of the streamlining effects of technology, particularly when it comes to cutting carbon emissions. Firms can use technology for everything from making their buildings more energy efficient (think wireless sensors), through to more effective fleet management, he says. GPS-enabled trucks and smarter back-end systems, for example, could dramatically reduce the amount of fuel spent on the road by optimising journeys.

There will be a power-related glitch at a major data centre
Datacentres are supporting higher-intensity computing systems, says Dave Douglas, vice president of eco responsibility for Sun Microsystems, but the grid isn't keeping up and we've already seen brown-outs in California, thanks to the State's near incredible power consumption. Douglas anticipates a major power failure due to a lack of capacity, and predicts that it will affect consumers in new and unforetold ways.

Companies will reassess energy sourcing strategies
The problem of getting power to the datacentre is one reason that Clive Longbottom is so enthusiastic about local energy generation. The service director for business process facilitation at analyst firm Quocirca says that larger companies may begin looking at different ways of sourcing their energy altogether. One example is generating their own primary power and relying on the grid for backup purposes, rather than the other way around.

"You create your own generator, and you run that flat out all the time, which means that it's always running at its best optimised capability," he says, suggesting that in addition to taking advantage of utilities' net metering policies, companies may even become their own mini-utilities to capitalise on surplus power from their own mini-plants. "You pump it out to the local environment, and then even make it available to local businesses and houses in the area."

Companies will consider the datacentre's role within the building
Companies may have greened the equipment within the datacentre, but what about greening the datacentre's own role in the building? Longbottom hopes that firms will start to use the excess heat created by cooling operations in the datacentre more intelligently. Ideally, they'd channel it throughout the rest of the building and use it to heat water or air, thus saving on their overall energy consumption.

Facilities management will begin talking to IT
Historically, the people that use the electricity are not the same people who pay the bills. By integrating facilities management and IT teams, it could become possible for the two to work together, creating new opportunities for accountability and cost savings in energy.

"Energy is becoming such an overwhelming part of the cost that the two organisations will be driven together," says Gartner research vice president Will Cappelli. "Does that mean an organisational merger? Probably not in most cases, but that means that lots of links will be built between them."

Companies will consider green consumer PCs
With consumers growing increasingly concerned about the environmental friendliness of the products they use, does the market exist for a PC that is truly green, rather than a slightly greener shade of beige? Forrester analysts have called for a '10-year PC', designed to be much more modular and easily upgradable, for example. Others debate the issue.

"People like PCs that play Doom at hundreds of frames a second," quips Quocirca's Longbottom, pointing to the 'wow' factor of a high-performance PCs, and the 'yawn' factor of a box that trundles along performing basic tasks while using less energy. But isn't there a market for such units? Not all users need the latest, fastest computing technology.

"There is a heck of a lot of R&D flowing in that direction," says a more optimistic Cappelli, arguing that devices in general will become greener over the next five years until it ceases to be a discrete market.

Enterprise management software vendors will wake up to green IT issues
At the moment, systems management software has a limited ability to comprehensively monitor and report on energy consumption across the computing infrastructure. Cappelli predicts that this will change as vendors first adapt and then rebuild their software to cope with demands from IT managers for real-time monitoring and reporting. Traditionally, the monitoring and ba selining landscape was about balancing quality and cost, he says. "It's becoming a more three dimensional balance between quality, cost and energy consumption."

Investors will continue to embrace green technologies
Clean technology investment has exploded in the past year, and this is set to continue as energy prices keep climbing. Look for a growing influx of cash from venture capitalists and fund managers, as they capitalise on the potential of new technologies to reduce energy costs, cut environmental impacts and drive efficiencies into operations.

Corporate appetites for offsets will diminish
Carbon offset credits were all the rage in 2007. However, Sun's Douglas does not think the fervour will last. Companies are recognising that their cash can be better spent finding energy efficiencies inside the organisation, he argues, rather than simply buying the carbon equivalent of a Catholic indulgence. Consequently, companies will spend more time cleaning the house than paying to keep it dirty.