The Green IT Readiness Index

IT professional services company Datacom has achieved the highest rating yet achieved by any organisation in the RMIT University-Connection Research Green IT Readiness Index. In a study conducted in October 2009, Datacom achieved a rating of 72.9 (out of 100), substantially higher than the Australian cross-industry average of 39.5.

The rating system measures performance in five areas of green IT - end-user IT efficiencies, enterprise IT efficiencies, life cycle (procurement and disposal), measurement, and enablement. Datacom's highest scores were in life cycle (80.0) and enablement (76.0) - an important area that measures the usage of IT to lower the energy consumption and carbon footprint of the whole organisation.

"The high rating vindicates our efforts in green IT," said Kassandra Singh, General Manager of Datacom Systems. "We are working very hard to ensure our processing and that of our customers is as environmentally friendly as possible. But the rating also shows that we can do better in some areas - and has highlighted a number of factors where we can improve. We are particularly interested in ensuring that we can get better energy consumption and efficiency metrics out of our data centres."

The Green IT Readiness Index was developed by Connection Research in conjunction with RMIT University in Melbourne. It relies on benchmarking respondents to an online survey on green IT policies, techniques and technologies across the five key areas mentioned above. The database now includes over 400 organisations in Australia and New Zealand, allowing detailed comparisons of green IT 'readiness', or maturity by industry or organisation size.

"Datacom's performance is the highest we have seen from any organisation, in any industry," said Graeme Philipson, Research Director of Connection Research. "It is hard to achieve the sort of rating Datacom has achieved, because the bar is set very high. Most organisations talk about green IT, but they do not properly define it and they do not set themselves goals. Datacom does."

Connection Research and RMIT University are about to conduct their second annual green IT survey across Australia. The data derived in the survey will allow a broad comparison between green IT performance this year compared to last year. "The earlier study found that there was a lot of talk about green IT, but not a lot of action," said Philipson."This year we expect some improvement, but not a lot. Our benchmarking exercises through the year indicate that little has changed. Datacom remains an exception to the general rule."