Why the smart money is on Green IT

IT Managers in the education sector are showing an upsurge of interest in green technology, reports leading education IT services organisation ITS Feda.

Strong positive responses to the cost saving benefits of new green IT technologies were seen at ITS Feda’s recent annual conferences. Replacing desktop PC’s with lower energy consumption thin client devices was an area of particular interest, with two thirds of the attending Educational IT Managers marking it for special attention.

ITS Feda was originally part of the Further Education Development Agency and deals with a wide range of academic establishments in the UK, so it is ideally placed to feel the pulse of educational IT. Penny Price, Managing Director of ITS Feda, said “With the debate ongoing about cutting our carbon footprints, new technologies give real opportunities for our customers to make a substantial change to their energy utilisation”

New technological advancements are now offering lower energy usage without sacrificing any processing power or speed. The new thin client devices ITS Feda’s college clients are trialling utilise between just 3 and 5 watts of power. In comparison current thin client models use 20-30 watts and normal PC’s average 120-160 watts. The financial savings that can be made by large organisations replacing PC’s with such high-tech/low-energy devices are as substantial as the environmental ones.

Recent examples highlighting this trend include Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh.
ITS Feda provided Citrix training to staff involved in their new thin client implementation which has just been rolled out across 95% of their current campuses in preparation for their move to a soon-to-be completed eco friendly building. Whilst the ecological motivations behind moves like this are sincere and valued, they travel hand in hand with sound business benefits. With UK academic institutions serving anything between 1,000 and 30,000 users, the cost of IT energy consumption in this sector is not calculated in pennies. For example, Enfield College, one of 5 colleges currently trialling ITS Feda's new low-energy thin client, is predicting a saving of £13,000 per year on their electricity bill if they adopt their planned 1000 units.

Rakesh Kumar, research vice president at Gartner noted "Today, energy costs typically form less than 10 percent of an overall IT budget…but this could rise to more than 50 percent in the next few years.” Meanwhile a recent Gartner study concluded the current use of IT in industry produced the same amount of CO2 as the airline industry. It also stated that the growth in power requirements and levels of waste produced renders the current state of affairs unsustainable, recommending that IT organisations develop a strategy to address the current negative effects of using ICT.

ITS Feda intelligence suggests that thin client technology may become a front runner in these nascent strategies.

So it seems that whilst the green lobby is focusing on educating us on green issues, educational IT departments are now firmly focusing on implementing them.


More information about ITS Feda can be found here: http://www.itsgroup.org.uk/aboutus.aspx

Contact for this article is:
Gillian Brown, Marketing Co-ordinator,
ITS Feda Ltd, Coombe Lodge, Blagdon, Bristol, BS40 7RG
info@itsgroup.org.uk, T: 0870 145 1600