11/4/11

By Sophie Baker

The greatest potential for green IT to supply critical energy efficiencies and cost savings is in the financial services sector, reports Fujitsu.

Green IT: The Financial Services Industry Benchmark Research is the first multi-country survey to determine the maturity of Green IT practices and technologies across banking, finance and insurance organisations in the UK, the USA, India and Australia.

The report found that the consumption of energy by IT is greatest within the financial services sector, thanks to large scale infrastructure, data storage and transaction requirements. This, Fujitsu said, makes energy sourcing, usage and pricing important management issues.

The report quantifies current practices to better understand what role IT can play in maximising energy efficiencies and enabling organisation-wide transformation in an effort to return significant cost savings to the industry.

“The results of our benchmarking survey provide an invaluable international perspective on global best practice trends and enable comparisons within countries against similar organisations,” commented Juliet Silvester, head of corporate responsibility programmes at Fujitsu UK and Ireland. “The data reveals the potential for Green IT to provide the next set of tools which IT management can leverage for critical energy and cost savings, as well as the flow-on effect of environmental improvement.”

The Green IT maturity of financial institutions was compared under five categories: lifecycle, end-user IT efficiencies, enterprise and datacentre IT efficiencies, use of IT as a low-carbon enabler, and measurement and monitoring.

The four countries’ sectors were ranked as follows: UK was first with 63.8; USA second at 60.3; Australia third at 53.9; and India.

Financial services performed above the average in terms of industries, at 57.3.
The measurement and monitoring area was identified as the section that can provide the greatest improvement.