How to Go Green for Profitability and Sustainability

Phase No. 3: Reducing environmental impact

Through these efforts, your company will begin to realize ongoing savings created by the reduction in energy consumption, which in turn will reduce your impact on the environment. To further augment your environmental stewardship initiatives, you can invest back into your organization and the environment by offsetting carbon emissions through the purchase of renewable energy credits and partnering with the EPA Green Power Program.

The green IT solutions that have been implemented—coupled with the achievement of carbon neutrality—will provide the opportunity to generate goodwill and exemplify stewardship to internal and external stakeholders. Through this achievement, an organization will exemplify leadership while simultaneously experiencing the guaranteed savings and benefits of credibility in an emerging green industry.

Phase No. 4: Green sustainability and profitability

The impact these solutions have on the bottom line is truly transformational. Companies benefit in two areas of cost savings from these innovations. First, the upfront cost savings to purchase new infrastructure of PCs and servers can be reduced by 50 percent by using hosted, virtualized environments in co-located facilities. Second, the ongoing savings are clear and measurable with power and utility bill reductions that bring guaranteed savings.

For example, one company with over 40 employees, 20 servers and power consumption that exponentially increased year after year was able to reduce power costs by over 50 percent. This translated into a power savings of $13,000 per year. To further increase the savings, they were able to reposition 50 percent of their internal support staff into profit-generating positions.

The small business that has 30 computers and desktop printers can reduce their power consumption by over 54 percent when green IT solutions are in place. That means the bottom line is improved, profit margins are increased, and organizations enjoy the sustainability of both their business and the environment. That is an impact that simply cannot be ignored.

Scott P. Stephan is Vice President of ANALYSYS. Scott is responsible for vision and oversight of the company's technical services and operations. Scott has more than 10 years in IT-related consulting and management expertise. Scott joined ANALYSYS as a Director of IT to an ANALYSYS client with over 500 employees and 17 offices. Prior to ANALYSYS, Scott was responsible for new site expansions and infrastructure development at ComputerTraining.com, a national provider of classroom-based IT training and certification. He can be reached at scott.stephan@analysys.net.