Top ten tips for Green IT

1. Teleconferencing

The benefit of face-to-face conversation is unbeatable, but modern, high definition video-conferencing has brought remarkable clarity to what was once flaky technology. Video-conferencing could not only save you money from all the travelling expenses, it could save hundreds of tons of carbon emissions every year.

2. Ditch Paper

People still, even in this day and age, work with print outs every day. Paper is an environmentally draining product, requiring felling of trees and the use of huge quantities of bleach.

Try to source recycled paper, make duplex printing default and investing printers that automatically power down.

3. e-Documents and online tools

Try to reduce staff printing documents at all by providing online forms i.e. for holiday requests possibly built into an existing Intranet.

4. Consolidated Offices

Having geographically distributed Offices can be inefficient because of the duplicate overheads involved. One office will use less power than running two running the same amount of hardware. Lighting and cooling costs will also be reduced.

5. Virtualisation

Virtualisation offers cost reductions in the server room. By reducing the number of servers needed and making more efficient use of the ones that are running can cut down energy and cooling bills. A single server can run the workload of ten standard servers as virtual machines.

6. Home working

With almost all office work now done on a PC, it’s possible for staff to sign in and work seamlessly no matter where they are. This reduces space and power within the office, and will save on rent and utility charges. It will also lower emissions due to employees not having to drive to work.

7. Server rooms

Huge energy savings can be made be making the server room more efficient. Installing motion-sensitive lighting can, over long periods of time reduce a company’s energy use. Closing any air leaks in air conditioning systems can also help.

8. Office Space

Position your desks and workstations near windows to make best use of the natural, to save energy on lighting and to reduce electricity bills.

9. Turn it off

If you don’t require your computers to be on during the night, these machines should be switched off. Asking employees to do this is one of the least effective ways as they often forget. One way round this is to set all machines to power down unless active at a certain time in the evening. You could also use automatic remote shut down tools.

10. Think holistically

Investigate unusual ways to save energy. Providing home desktops and broadband connections for employees may seem an expensive overhead, however it could yield savings in real estate rental and utility charges, and reduce the carbon footprint of each employee reducing their travel.

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