As an administratively intensive sector with a significant reliance on IT infrastructure, energy directly attributable to information technology in the financial services sector is significant. Gartner estimates that as much as 40% of the total energy of an organisation in this sector can be directly attributable to IT. Hence, any savings that the IT department achieves can have a significant impact on the overall performance of the business, particularly relating to emissions and energy reduction.
Direct reductions within the IT department:
Focus on the low hanging fruit first. The lowest is actually the desktop and monitor infrastructure which uses as much as 39% of the total energy footprint. Powering off PC’s automatically can create significant savings for any organisation with 1000′s of devices. NightWatchman, the world’s leading solution in this area can save organisations as much as $75 per desktop per annum in energy costs, whilst still ensuing that patching and management occurs through its reliable and scaleable WakeUP technology.
The datacentre should be the next area of focus, accounting for around 23% of the total energy of the IT department.
Here care should be taken to ensure that the datacentre is designed efficiently with hot and cold aisles and the correct temperature and humidity controls. A datacentre that is set at temperatures that are too cold can be a significant drain on energy usage.
Further savings in the datacentre include virtualisation which can result in as much as an 80% saving in energy consumption. Be on the lookout for emerging technologies that will place servers into lower power states, reducing significant energy overnight when servers are still running but doing no productive work.
Offetting
The financial services industry is uniquely positioned to educate the man on the street in relation to global warming and climate change. The reach of the industry is significant and by exposing customers to environmental impacts can be tremendously beneficial in the fight against global warming.
Offering customers offsetting solutions can provide a mechanism for raising awareness on environmental issues. impactChoice, a micro offset certificate issuing authority provides organisations with a technology enablement platform to link business transactions to their carbon equivalents and provide a micro certificate to offset the carbon associated with the transaction.
Services
Our services portfolio provides a roadmap for ICT organisations to embark upon a sustainable IT strategy. Our engagement model starts with IT Footprinter , which provides organisations with a baseline measurement of carbon emissions. IT Analyser provides an assessment of the IT service from procurement through to disposal of assets. Finally IT Transformer assists you with strategic planning and architecting a green IT service.
We have built up a wealth of intellectual capital in this field and offer customers a simple and painless engagement model with deliverables that are pragmatic and relevant, adding real value and improving the environmental credentials of the organisation.