This issue of Cutter Benchmark Review focuses on green IT and green IS and offers a departure from themes we have recently explored -- some will say perhaps an overdue departure given the importance of this issue. As attentive readers of CBR may have noticed, our interests have recently coalesced around three main themes: innovation and the role of IT in fostering/enabling it, talent development and staffing, and agility. Our focus on these themes has been dictated by their sweeping importance and by the fact that they are "top of mind" for our readers. As you know, we at CBR pride ourselves on tackling issues that have real significance and staying power (i.e., not the flavor-of-the-month fads). Innovation, talent management, and agility clearly qualify on both dimensions. They focus, respectively, on the emerging value proposition of the IT shop (innovation), the emerging cost and operational side threats (staffing), and the challenge for future management of the IT shop and the enterprise as a whole (agility).
While these themes are important, and these are ultimately the things that IT leaders are paid to pay attention to, I am going to argue that green and sustainable IT issues are just as important. Specifically, green IT is concerned with both the viability of the organization and its efficient (i.e., cost-effective) operations.
On the viability side, sustainable IT has characteristics of security and risk management. I know these risks firsthand as I am an advisor to a startup based in Rome that focuses on streamlining electronic distribution for hotels and resorts. The cofounders of the firm always know when I teach security in my course. Invariably, once a semester, as I get ready for my lecture, I get an uneasy feeling about how much is at stake when security breaches occur. As I get that feeling, I call them up to be reassured that we have taken all the appropriate steps to mitigate all security risks. This is probably the same feeling you have all experienced once or twice (some of us more) when you have gone to boot up your computer and found that it does not start. We immediately think about the last time we backed up our files (in my case, typically a long time), and we get the sinking feeling of losing one of the most valuable things we have -- our data. The key is that a looming crisis often brews under the surface, but once it reaches its trigger point, it explodes to the surface. The fact that nothing major has happened yet does not mean that there is no crisis, but makes it easy to forget about it.
As I was reading our contributors' articles and as I have become more interested in sustainability overall, I got the same feeling. So much is at stake when it comes to the viability of our planet, let alone our organizations, that it is our responsibility to make green IT and green IS a priority. But note that this focus on viability does not come simply at a cost. This is where sustainability shares important characteristics with the innovation and agility trends we have been covering lately. Sustainability and green IT create significant opportunities for organizations that are nimble and forward-looking enough to seize them. Green IT and IS can be great for business!
In this installment of CBR we tackle the issue of green IT head-on. Our objective is to benchmark current practices and offer tangible guidelines on what you can do tomorrow in your own organization. Our academic team, from the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia (USA), consists of Marie-Claude Boudreau, associate professor of management information systems, Richard T. Watson, the J. Rex Fuqua Distinguished Chair for Internet Strategy and director of the Center for Information Systems Leadership, and Adela Chen, a doctoral student in the management information systems department. Together, Marie-Claude, Rick, and Adela have accumulated years of experience researching issues associated with sustainable IS operations and the role that IT can play in monitoring and mitigating the organization's environmental footprint. Our practicing contributor is Emily Ryan. Emily is a manager of client services for Software AG (USA). Her recent work focuses on "managing for environmental sustainability" and on helping organizations reform their IT and internal practices for the future.
Marie-Claude, Rick, and Adela begin their contribution by framing the domain and by recasting our focus from the narrower green IT to the more inclusive green IS. Such refocusing and change in terminology is more than just semantic, as it opens up opportunities to use IT proactively to decrease the organizational environmental footprint. With this wider definition in place Marie-Claude, Rick, and Adela propose a framework to categorize possible green IS initiatives aimed at improving the environment; they then use the framework to guide their analysis of the survey results and to provide tangible guidelines for your use.
As our practicing contributors typically do, Emily dives right into the data and her analysis of the responses. Her analysis is incisive and insightful, and I particularly draw your attention to the section detailing implementation challenges and the one focusing on management tools that can be used to develop green IT standards and protocols. After addressing governance and measurement, Emily produces a set of guidelines that I think you will find very valuable as you make the transition from planning to action.
I feel that this is one of the most important issues we have produced during my three-year tenure as editor of CBR. This installment will hopefully convince you that using IS to become more efficient and to reduce your organization's environmental footprint is not only the right thing to do, but plain-old good business and bottom-line management.
