13 Jan 2009

Suppliers 'battling for green credentials'

IT suppliers are becoming competitive on green-related technology, it has been suggested.

James Murray, editor of BusinessGreen.com, which helps firms to improve their environmental performance, said that technology developers know they have to deliver on energy efficiency, while not compromising on performance.

The industry is highly innovative and does not have to sacrifice a machine's power to boast greater green credentials, he suggested.

Mr Murray said: "There's hardly a product that gets launched in terms of a data centre or a desktop where they are not competing on trying to say 'this has the lowest energy use'."

His comments come as some large firms are turning to hosted solutions, such as virtualisation and cloud computing, which can enable firms to store sensitive data at a reduce cost, while cutting energy consumption caused by managing data centres in house.

Furthermore, research by Kyocera Mita, published in August last year, revealed that 57 per cent of UK firms were operating an environmental policy to improve their energy performance.