Green IT 09 Conference

I was a speaker and delegate at the Green IT Conference & Exhibition 09 (http://www.greenituk.com) at the Islington Design Centre in London on the 6th and 7th May last week. Now in its second year it attracted some very good speakers and industry leading delegates. It was slightly smaller this year obviously a knock on effect from the global recession but the major theme was on how Green IT strategies can actually help companies reduce costs to help the bottom line dispelling the myth that Green IT is more expensive or you have to be a tree hugger.

Chris Mines from Forrester Research opened the conference with his keynote after Lord Hunt, Minister for Sustainable Development and Energy Innovation pulled out of the event for medical reasons. The Green IT 09 Keynote started with Chris Mines asking "How does Green IT continue to flourish in a recession?" he answers that we must "Align eco-logy with eco-nomics” to get past the myth that Green IT is more expensive. He says we must "Start at the top of the IT stack, not the bottom, rationalise the application portfolio which in turn creates hardware consolidation".

He stated that according to Forrester research "55% of enterprises have embraced green criteria for IT procurement". He finished his keynote by saying "40% of companies say it is still too early to know whether the recession will have an impact on Green IT initiatives"

Chris slides and research on Green IT can be found here. You need to register on the Forrester site to download the material. http://www.forrester.com/greenitevent09

Next up was Gerry Pennell, CIO of London Olympics 2012 who asked the question "How will the London Olympic games of 2012 ensure that the technology is sustainable and energy efficient as possible?" He went on to say that "Sustainability is a central agenda for London 2012 including technology and IT" and includes that "Charities and schools may benefit from the disposal of 12,000 PC's after the 2012 games"

Day two keynote was hosted by an entertaining Paul Coby CIO of British Airways who started by saying "Corporate responsibility is a critical issue for the aviation industry and we need to address this through actions rather than words". He says there are four main areas of Green IT which need addressing. These are Green IT procuring, installing, running and ultimately disposing. B.A. pledged to reduce their IT Carbon footprint 25% by 2011. Some of the statistics he presented were B.A recycle 80% of their old IT equipment and give a further 10% to charities and they have saved 7,000 tonnes of CO2 by switching off PC's at night in addition to data centre power consumption reducing by 7%.

His comment on "Too much vendor Bollocks" was reported in Eweek linked below http://bit.ly/BIpCK

I enjoyed the Green IT 09 event and found it very worthwhile. I thought that the whole Green IT message and awareness is maturing.

My own presentation on day two was entitled the "The Efficient business case" and a copy is displayed below.

I also micro blogged live on twitter from the event as @Geekygreen. The posts can still be found

at http://www.twitter.com/geekygreen

A copy of all the presentations from the event can be downloaded at http://bit.ly/DXaIU

A good overview of the Green IT event from Eweek can be found here http://bit.ly/mPXma