Green IT becoming more fashionable

An October Forrester survey, "Green Progress in Enterprise IT" ($279), found that 38 percent of respondents were applying environmental criteria in evaluating products, compared with 25 percent in an April survey. The survey was based on responses from 130 enterprise IT professionals at North American and European companies.

Given the increasing decibels of talk about global warming, performance per watt and the cost to power data centers, the results aren't surprising. However, the survey points out a gap between awareness of environmental considerations and action--only 15 percent were actually implementing green IT practices.

Apparently, more companies factor in doing what's good for the environment as an important buying criteria. It came in second on the list of top motivations for green IT (see below), preceded by reducing energy costs.

As a consequence of the green IT reaching more of a tipping point, vendors will make claims, or fashion statements, about the "greenness" of their products and services that may be less than factual. The industry will need to come up with some kind of standard, like nutrition labels on food, to avoid green marketing gone bad.