Sustainable IT: Driving interest

So how can the channel demonstrate environmental savings to their customers and drive interest in sustainable solutions? ComputerCorp’s Michael van Zoggel said integrators can only do what they can do and what they can measure and justify.

“Moreover than nor, we will show a customer the end goal and impact and we’re getting quizzed quite hard on how we justify that, the metrics we use and formulations,” he said. “By focusing on the things we can measure well, we’re showing that we are responsible and the savings are realistic and tangible.”

It was also about giving customers options, van Zoggel said.

“You can say now, feel free to do it this way and this is the result. Or do it another way and this is the end result,” he said. According to Datacom’s Kassandra Singh, enabling organisations to charge their own users for usage was another effective way of getting the sustainable IT message across.

“So if one department prints more, they pay more. And there’s a personal incentive too,” she said. Corporate Express’ Mark Jones, agreed individual involvement would foster a cultural change from the ground up.

“We looked at turning off our phone fleet overnight and just having one or two on. What we found there was a $60 saving to doing that in terms of power cost, so big deal. But we did it purely because we wanted to change people’s behaviour,” he said. “Because if you then start turning off PCs but you don’t turn the phones off, you can’t take a high moral ground.

“The other thing we’re trying to do is work towards a wattage per desktop number. We are aiming to do is allow staff to have whatever device they like on the desktop, but the wattage has to stay under a certain amount. If you can change people’s behaviours, then they will start to come up with ideas.”

Corporate Express and Symantec have both implemented green ideas groups and incentives within their employee base as a way to recognise green champions within their business. Symantec’s Jose Iglesias said almost every office worldwide now had its own Green IT team, which was helping to improve its carbon footprint.

“It puts a lot of value on how much our employees want to do the right thing. The people aspect is very important,” he added.

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