Greener BI

Dataupia put out a press release at the beginning of March highlighting their "ability to conserve energy costs and alleviate space constraints" thereby providing organizations with a data warehousing appliance that "combines processing and storage capacity into one system to save on overhead, power and cooling costs, and space requirements."  This is just one of several press releases and news items that are focused on the greener side of IT and how to save energy and reduce costs of IT initiatives.

When I worked at Toyota, most if not all of the charitable donations and efforts focused on the environment.  Also, when I recently approached an online travel company on behalf of a charitable organization that I am involved with, I was told that all of their donations are allocated to environmental efforts.  In these two cases, it makes perfect sense as the travel and automotive industries contribute to a large portion of air pollution. 

With added pressure on IT to develop and deliver greener solutions, hopefully organizations will move beyond recycling initiatives towards more proactive initiatives that take into account more environmentally friendly options to save energy as well as costs.