Sustainable IT in an Uncertain World
As we chart our course for the next 10 years in The Green Grid Association, our success comes by identifying significant challenges for the industry, developing meaningful solutions, and inspiring our colleagues to move toward common goals.
Our development is done through the collaboration of our members, and I learn every day from the brilliant engineers and business people from our member companies. They share their ideas and create the tools that we need to build more efficient and effective IT solutions and data centers…and to enable a more sustainable world.
My voice is but one of thousands in The Green Grid, but here are eight operational attributes that I think will become even more important over time:
- Net-zero (or better): Overall operations will need to assure their use of clean energy and invest in sequestering or avoiding the CO2 that the business produces
- Clean: Committed to circular economy goals of choosing products that are measurably recyclable, re-usable, durable, upgradeable, repairable…
- Resilient: Hardened against threats of disruption and disaster, both likely and improbable
- Secure: Hardened against human threats, both willful and mistaken
- Energy-aware: Hardware and software that communicate and manage their energy use
- Flexible: Managers will need new tools to more quickly evaluate and deploy new technologies
- Scalable: IT will be deployed with even more modularity; right-sized to current needs
- Distributed: Applications, 5G, and security will drive more use of distributed IT resources
If you don’t agree, I would love to understand your perspective. After all, The Green Grid is a place to learn and grow as individuals, and for companies to acquire the means for future success.
You can reach me at chairman[at]thegreengrid.org. And as always, we welcome new members who would like to add their voice to our community response to ever-changing standards, technologies, and environments.