Our Green to Gold event at Interop Las Vegas gathered some of the leading lights in the technology industry to discuss why greening IT is such a central component of corporate sustainability. In the coming weeks well be sharing key takeaways from that breakout session, as top executives at Intel, Yahoo!, Sun Microsystems, HP, and Google offer concrete steps to help IT managers make their departments more resource efficient.

First up: John Hengeveld, director of the Server Products Group at Intel, makes the business case (via Bill Clinton and Miss Piggy!) and rattles off four things IT executives should do right now to ensure that their companies will be riding the green wave into the future instead of getting thumped.

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Intels Top Three Reasons for Greening IT

1. Sustained growth business models require sustainable business practices. Growing the capability to meet IT demand must be done at reduced cost per incremental performance. Energy and sustainability costs will continue to pressure operating margins and limit growth until they are brought under control.


2. Remembering President Clinton... it's the workload stupid. IT technology has the job of the effective delivery of a workload with the most suitable performance and the lowest cost. By designing for energy-efficient performance, you actually increase performance capability (consolidation, transaction processing, etc.) while reducing total energy.


3. Remembering Miss Piggy: Its not easy being NOT GREEN. Shareholders are beginning to care about the risks to earnings and share price of not following an ecologically sustainable approach. There is growing momentum along with open corporate governance to require CEO's to state energy policy and goals and be held accountable for them. (Not incidentally, Intel has been a leader in its energy and sustainability policies for many years.) In data centers, IT build out, carbon impact, and energy costs will be a highly visible and impactful portion of many firms energy footprint.

Four Things IT Execs Should Do Right Now

1. Be able to state the business economic case for green IT within your firms. Develop a model that includes lifecycle costs and total energy costs and use that model in decision making. Prove that energy efficiency purchases have substantial financial benefit for your firm beyond the initial capital outlay.


2. Gain control over your IT infrastructure. Set efficiency improvement metrics and establish policies to audit and act to eliminate inefficient systems through consolidation, upgrade, or retirement. Breakdown fiefdoms and organizations that get in the way.


3. Demand technology that address the whole-system problem from companies the fundamentally "get it" and think/work at the whole system level. Buying innovation that impacts your bottom line will encourage more innovation that impacts your bottom line.


4. Demand governmental policies that stimulate public-private cooperation and a rational system of incentives that operate at a system level.
   

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John Hengeveld has 20 years of experience leading the development of technology and business strategy. John is currently a director for Intels Digital Enterprise Group and is responsible for developing 5-10 year business strategy for technologies including multicore, application accelerators, virtualization technology, and power efficiency technology. Dedicated to life-long learning, he also teaches Corporate Strategy and Business Strategy and Policy for Portland State Universitys Master of Business Administration program.