Compare and contrast: Green IT budget metrics

I wrote about one of the findings from Symantec's annual Green IT study about a week ago, when I explored its revelation that respondents felt that software as a service is a relevant Green IT strategy. Wanted to throw out a couple of additional data points, so that you can assess where your own organization stands in the scheme of green IT schemes.

First off, despite the general malaise in IT spending, with many companies shrinking their budgets over the past year, 73 percent of Symantec's survey respondents indicated that were expecting their Green IT budgets to rise over the next 12 months. About one-third expected that spending to increase between 6 percent and 10 percent. Sadly, the survey results don't provide an idea about what percentage of a typical IT budget could be said to be applied to Green IT activities.

The main stimulus for action seems to be getting a handle on electricity consumption: 83 percent of the respondents said they were either responsible for or cross-charged for electricity. The typical respondent spends $21 million to $27 million on electricity for the data center alone, the survey found. Almost 40 percent of the respondents hope to reduce that spending by between 20 percent and 40 percent over the next five years.

Symantec's survey was conducted by Applied Research, and it covers 1,052 enterprise IT respondents representing CIOs/CTOs and other senior level executives. The survey was worldwide, with approximately 389 responses from within the United States. Here's a link to the results.