Sustainable business management is an important area for CIOs to focus on to build green IT culture. There are some promising tech-driven business models that have raised hopes for climate and sustainability commitments to lead the transformation.
Focusing to support organizational ESG goals has accelerated the need for lower technological emissions. CIOs and IT leaders looking forward to building green IT culture are keen to implement sustainability programs and strategies to help organizations accelerate their climate and sustainability commitments to investors, stakeholders, and end users.
In light of green IT objectives, CIOs are finding ways to drive an environmentally sustainable tech agenda that will boost organizational change at scale. As this transformation sweeps the tech-driven business landscape, opportunities to achieve net-zero or carbon-negative sustainability objectives are also increasing.
CIOs are striving to ensure that technology related to environmental sustainability is deployed aggressively, while actively enhancing new infrastructure and technology.
Also Read: 3 Moves for CIOs to Achieve an Efficient IT Organization
The three areas of opportunities where CIOs need to work on being a key leader are:
Digital technology capabilities such as IoT sensors, AI and advanced analytics, and Blockchain can be double-edged sword in aggregating real-time data and optimizing processes to reduce environmental impact. CIOs recognize that embracing these sustainable technologies can be a differentiator for organizations by creating a competitive advantage.
Therefore, they look ahead for ways to deploy these and other green IT landscapes and bring new solutions and perspectives to the workplace throughout the organization.
The rapid growth of cloud computing and cloud data centers is mitigating data management challenges across organizations as these consume relatively minimum energy and power and are also cost-efficient.
Moving to the cloud and collaborating with cloud providers committed to zero/carbon neutral footprint and adopting efficient migration approaches can be advantageous for CIOs and CTOs to meet environmental sustainability goals.
Adopting a cloud-first strategy is a way for CIOs to improve the sustainability of their tech organization.
Making sustainability an integral part of technology investment decisions on cloud migration that include green coding, 5G, virtual reality, and software can help CIOs lead organizational change to reduce carbon emissions and accelerate more sustainability strategies
When it comes to building green IT culture, many CIOs must consider investing needed to replace end-user devices such as laptops, smartphones, printers, tablets, and other hardware systems that support more carbon emission across organizations. The devices are typically replaced more often a smartphone’s average refresh cycle is two years, laptops have four years, and printers is five years.
On an average, servers are replaced every five years. Replacing or upgrading them can eliminate worrisome emissions from the end-user devices. CIOs can capture significant carbon benefits without making a big investments or tightening budgets, by replacing or upgrading the above facilities.
In addition, CIOs can even collaborate with suppliers that use greener devices and fulfill commitments to emission reduction. Further, low-cost and high-impact actions also include optimizing business travel, encouraging hybrid work culture, emphasizing data computing needs, and increasing the use of the cloud to manage workloads.
The fastest and most effective measure for enabling green IT is to revise policies for technology sourcing. This is where the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model for business plays an essential role. It encourages user-friendly experiences through software and networks and minimal use of end-user devices.
The effectiveness of this approach will depend on CIOs focusing on building stable and secured networks, having less resource-intensive coding at the device level, edge computing capabilities, and, of course the cloud.
Also Read: Three Crucial Attributes of a Resilient IT Culture
As a part of the sustainability efforts, the CIO and CTOs will need to collaborate on reviewing and adjusting device timelines, device-to-person ratios, and purchasing decisions to encourage cost-effectiveness. The spirit of collaboration should extend to focus on formulating plans and strategies that provide significant green IT benefits.
In this, CIOs can set green policies and standards for their vendors and suppliers, incorporating reducing carbon emissions disclosures into the criteria for purchasing decisions.
Building green IT culture isn’t a new concept. However, CIOs are now taking the approach ahead seriously with the concerns of environmental changes. These are some of the ‘call to action ways’ CIOs can implement to boost green IT and build a sustainable future for businesses to survive and grow constantly.
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Anushree Bhattacharya is a Senior Editor with Ondot Media, where she covers stories on B2B business strategy, thought leadership, and corporate technology culture. She is a quality-oriented professional writer with eight years of experience. She has been curating content for the B2B industry, and her writing style is inclined toward how businesses want to perceive information about emerging digital transformations and technology developments. Anushree blends the best information on trending digital transformations, technology-driven stories, and SEO-optimized content. Anushree is proficient in technology journalism and curates information-driven stories about enterprise tech for EnterpriseTalk publication.
