Green It. A guideline for energy efficient and environment friendly information technology

ABSTRACT Technology has become a vital element for all organizations and this growing significance has forced companies to have huge and solid IT structures. However today IT developed into one of the biggest contributors to the global warming. Both for environmental and financial motives and to remain competitive, companies need to ensure that their information technology systems are managed in an environmentally friendly manner. This study analyses the impact of information technology on the environment and organizations’ cost structures, the potential benefits of sustainable IT planning and the barriers to adopt. Then the existing possible methods and approaches for greening the IT are investigated. This investigation does not focus on only the data center efficiency but also other contributors of power consumption and environment impact such as paper recycling or client side of the IT. After analyzing all the possible techniques of greening the IT, the guidelines offered in order to achieve a sustainable IT structure are searched and some of them are deeply analyzed. The examined guidelines base their works on very different aspects. This made it possible to see the strategies from wider view. Lastly, a new guideline is presented. With this, aim is to provide a guideline for the companies to evaluate their IT structure and improve their greenness from all aspects with practical examples.