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Symantec's Green IT Report

Security vendor Symantec has made a bit of a splash with a report it released last week based on a survey of just over 1000 companies worldwide. We’re normally a bit wary of vendor surveys, because they tend to be biased in favour of that vendor’s products or services – no vendor is going to release anything that is detrimental to their message, are they?

But the Symantec data is worth a read. You can get it from their website:

www.symantec.com/about/news/resources

The Australian operation put out a press release outlining the highlights. These are worldwide – Australian data was not broken down separately (though there is an Asia Pacific Japan report). There were 50 Australian respondents.

What are Symantec’s highlights, and our do they accord with our own research, which is based on an Australian sample of 262 CIOs and IT managers? Let’s look at them in turn, and compare their assertions to what we know is happening locally.

Symantec Highlight 1: Green IT is now an essential
“Organisations are recognising the value of green data centres, rating reducing electricity consumption and reducing cooling costs as important factors in deciding to create a green data centre (58% and 51% respectively).”

Connection Research Findings
While they may “recognise the value”, they are not doing it. Fewer than 10% have even measured the power consumption of their IT function, and not many people are building new data centres, let alone green ones.

Symantec Highlight 2: Green IT budgets are rising
“79% of respondents observed that their budget for green IT initiatives is expected to increase over the next 12 months”.

Connection Research Findings
Yes, but off a low base. Green IT is rarely a separate budget item, and IT budgets are on average stable or declining.

Symantec Highlight 3: IT is willing to pay a premium for green equipment
“50% of respondents rated energy efficiency as very important in their purchasing decision, in addition only 5% of respondents were not willing to pay more for an energy efficient product of equivalent functionality”

Connection Research Findings
About the same as our own findings.

Symantec Highlight 4: IT is at the heart of enterprise green efforts
“An overwhelming 89% of respondents also voted that IT should play a significant role in minimising their organisation’s environmental footprint.”

Connection Research Findings
When we asked the same question, we had 34% strongly agreeing and another 45% tending to agree – a total of 79%. Not so different, and reasonable given that Australia may be behind the rest of the world and Symantec’s survey was done in March 2009 and ours was done in December 2008. But “should” is not “will”.

Symantec Highlight 5: Green IT initiatives are more of a priority
“Companies are looking to replace old equipment with newer, more efficient hardware; equally important are monitoring power consumption and improving the utilisation capacity of storage devices (96 percent each).”

Connection Research Findings
Well, yes they are. Not many people would say that they would replace their equipment with older, less efficient hardware, or that they would not wish to improve the utilisation of their storage devices. As for monitoring power consumption, we found that it’s simply still not happening.

So, how valid are Symantec’s findings? Their obvious intent is to talk up Green IT and to highlight its importance. The biggest problem with the data is that it looks mostly at intent and belief – it is not so strong on actual implementation, which is way behind.

As market researchers into Green IT, and as strong believers in reducing the carbon footprint of both IT and the whole organisation, Connection Research wants to see stronger takeup in the technologies and practices of Green IT. Our research – and Symantec’s – shows the desire is there. But the Symantec data gives far too much emphasis to that desire and far too little to the actual practice of Green IT.

 - Graeme Philipson

Greenpeace Cool IT Challenge

Greenpeace has launched its Cool IT Challenge, which scores IT companies on the extent to which they are helping to tackle climate change.

I like the way Greenpeace is doing this, because it acknowledges that IT companies have an important role to play in helping the whole economy reduce emissions. (Greenpeace says IT can help cut greenhouse gas emissions by 15% by 2020, but I would argue that the figure could be a lot higher). Anyway,IT companies are judged in three areas:

• 50% of the score measures the extent to which they are providing climate solutions to other parts of the economy, such as smarter transport, building energy efficiency and smart grids. It is certainly true that some companies have been slow in putting forward solutions, waiting for the market to come to them. I've made the point in previous blogs.