IT Sustainability: Passive vs Active Gains

In the 20 odd years that I’ve been following developments in ‘Green IT’, the industry narrative hasn’t changed that much. Once you establish that the Earth is hotting up and becoming more polluted, the next question is what this means for IT teams. Surveys then tell you that, yes, IT leaders see sustainability as a priority and are taking action, but that more needs to be done. And it’s not just about saving the planet, it’s because shareholders and customers expect you to step up, while regulators apply more and more pressure.

When we were designing our latest research study on IT sustainability, we wanted to get past this familiar narrative and get under the skin of what’s really going on at a grassroots level. We were particularly interested in how things like sentiment, motivation and ambition map onto practical reality. The results got us thinking a little differently so I thought I’d share some of the insights we came up with.

The Sentiment-Action Gap

To begin with, the research highlighted an interesting disconnect between sentiment and action when it comes to IT sustainability. While there’s plenty of passion and positive sentiment around the topic, this doesn’t appear to impact the IT decision-making processes as much as you might think.

This gels with many previous research studies we’ve conducted over the years. When we ask decision makers to rank factors influencing their solution, service, or supplier choices, sustainability consistently appears at or near the bottom of the list. It’s almost as if sustainability is seen as a tie-breaker. All other things being equal, you might look at energy efficiency, for example, to choose between otherwise equivalent systems options, but you’re unlikely to sacrifice security, reliability and performance to gain a sustainability advantage.

So how do we square this with the fact that most organisations tell us they really have implemented various technologies to boost energy efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions?

Passive versus Active Gains

Digging deeper into this disconnect, one explanation is that every time you replace an older piece of IT equipment with a modern alternative, you’re almost guaranteed to see improved energy efficiency. Today’s servers, storage devices, and network switches are significantly more efficient than their predecessors. It’s a welcome improvement, but it happens almost by default, with little conscious effort. In other words, it’s a passive gain, not something you have driven proactively.

The trap lies in becoming complacent as a result of these passive gains, and setting the bar too low when defining IT sustainability objectives. It’s all too easy to simply rely on natural refresh cycles, and just calibrate expectations in line with the inherent sustainability benefits that flow automatically from deployment of more modern solutions.

To be fair, we don’t see all IT teams behaving in this way, but many do, and anecdotally this is often on the basis that they have enough on their plate already, without ‘volunteering’ to go beyond a relatively easy-to-achieve baseline commitment. This isn’t a criticism, simply a reflection of the realities of working in a typical human resource constrained IT environment.

So how do you go further while keeping extended targets manageable?

Integrating Sustainability into Existing Activities

Something that comes across consistently from both our research and our conversations with IT leaders is the value of integrating sustainability goals and metrics into existing IT strategies and projects. Whether it’s using a more efficient software architecture to reduce compute requirements as you modernise an application, or consolidating and disposing of data when upgrading an ERP system to reduce storage needs, it’s about always looking for opportunities to drive sustainability gains as you execute projects that were on the agenda anyway.

This integrated approach avoids the need for separate, resource-intensive sustainability initiatives that may distract from core delivery activity. But even if you do need to define a discrete IT sustainability plan, it’s still useful to think like this to keep the program grounded. You can then sanity check top down targets against the bottom up view to identify expectation gaps, then negotiate internally and/or look for other opportunities to drive sustainability gains as appropriate.

Sometimes organising internally is enough to identify and assess potential opportunities, but if you need tailored guidance and help there are some very comprehensive services out there from consulting firms and MSPs who specialise in this area.

What about measurement?

A common hesitation we hear about pursuing a more proactive approach is a perceived difficulty in assessing potential gains and measuring progress, particularly in smaller environments where specialist tools and services can seem like overkill. However, advances in various adjacent areas are making things easier. As an example, the increasing focus on observability means systems are becoming much better instrumented, providing better access to relevant data. The rise of FinOps and IT cost management solutions also opens up opportunities, as carbon accounting is a natural fit with these. And just as in many other areas, AI-powered analytics tools are reducing the need for specialist skills and knowledge.

But overriding all this, perhaps the most important thing is to approach IT sustainability with the right mindset, acknowledging that perfect measurement isn’t always necessary or feasible. A pragmatic approach incorporating educated estimates and assumptions, and using proxies in place of absolute measurements, can usually provide ‘good enough’ insights. When you’re looking for significant changes rather than marginal gains, even rough measures can guide your efforts effectively.

Final Thoughts

The more I research the topic of IT sustainability, the more I’ve come to realise that reality is more nuanced than typical industry narratives suggest. While high-level strategies and top-down goals have their place, success in practice often depends on integrating sustainability into existing IT projects and initiatives – i.e. making sustainability an integral part of planning and operational management.

I’ve also formed the strong opinion that it’s important to look beyond passive gains from equipment refreshes. It’s a bit like using a fitness device on a personal basis to track calories burned on the road to losing weight. It’s not the total calories burned that counts, but the energy used during exercise beyond the baseline calories that would be burned anyway from simply being alive!

And continuing with that metaphor, it’s important to set achievable goals. Just as it doesn’t make sense for most people to strive for Olympic level performance, it’s also not helpful in an enterprise IT context to aim for AWS or Google levels of efficiency in your datacentre. Be realistic and acknowledge the law of diminishing returns. Sometimes it’s better to focus your efforts on enabling greater sustainability within the business, e.g. through technology-based solutions that enhance operational efficiency.

That said, with the right combination of proactivity and pragmatism, most IT teams could almost certainly contribute more to their organisation’s sustainability agenda from Green IT practices than they are doing today, while still remaining focused on core delivery.

Dale Vile

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Dale is a co-founder of Freeform Dynamics, and today runs the company. As part of this, he oversees the organisation’s industry coverage and research agenda, which tracks technology trends and developments, along with IT-related buying behaviour among mainstream enterprises, SMBs and public sector organisations.