A recent white paper, IBM Software: a green strategy for your entire organization, asks "Why go green?" Its answer: "With today’s market realities—rising energy costs; shrinking power and space capacity; increased regulatory scrutiny; and higher customer expectations—going green is not only socially responsible, it’s an economic imperative . . . There is a "perfect storm" gathering around energy consumption worldwide, as organizations and businesses face the unprecedented convergence of increasing energy demands and costs, diminishing capacities, heightened awareness and rigorous regulatory scrutiny." The paper goes on to examine some of the obvious drivers (e.g., energy) in detail, but I would have liked to see data on "higher customer expectations" and "heightened awareness".

The paper cautions, "focusing green IT efforts on the data center [alone] dramatically limit potential results", instead advocating a broader enterprise-wide vision of Green ITC. Much of the paper is a promotion for IBM solutions, but the practices it advocates can be widely applied.