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CIOs are under pressure to demonstrate IT’s contribution to the organization’s green agenda.
Accenture believes that CIOs must take a holistic view to maximize IT’s contribution to reducing carbon footprint and enabling overall high performance.The Accenture Green Maturity Model can help CIOs to underpin this holistic approach with the basis and rationale for further action.
CIOs find themselves in the front line of the battle against climate change. CIOs are under pressure from many quarters: CEOs want higher shareholder value, CFOs want higher returns on IT investments and COOs want lower-cost, more effective operations. And everybody wants the CIO to help drive the organization toward high performance.
A new pressure has been added to the mix: as a major (if not the major) consumer of energy within the organization, the IT department is being asked to demonstrate its commitment to reducing carbon emissions. Put simply, IT needs to go green—and prove it.
CIOs must take a holistic approach to reducing the organization’s overall carbon footprint and maximizing IT’s contribution to the organization’s drive to achieve high performance and raising the standing of the IT organization in the organization as a whole.
Spurred on by hardware vendors who are seizing the opportunity to supply new energy-efficient hardware, the debate around green IT can remain marooned in the data center. While important, this focus risks missing some major opportunities beyond the data center. These include:
These areas of influence mean that CIOs have a substantial opportunity to further the energy efficiency and corporate citizenship aims of the entire corporation. By providing leadership beyond the confines of the IT organization, the CIO can also help to raise the standing of IT within the organization as a whole.
Accenture’s research and experience indicates that CIOs should focus on five key areas to pursue the benefits of green IT in a systematic and effective way. These five key areas can have the most rapid and demonstrable impact on energy consumption—and thereby on the organization’s green agenda:
To help IT gain its rightful place at the heart of the environmental agenda, CIOs must scope the available opportunity across these five areas to benchmark current performance and maturity in energy efficiency, and identify focus areas for improvement.
March 20, 2008
Outlook from Accenture
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