Results from green IT survey

The Green IT: The Financial Services Industry Benchmark report, launched globally by Fujitsu, contains the findings of the first multicountry survey to determine the maturity of green IT practices and technologies within banking, finance and insurance organisations in Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and India.

The consumption of energy by IT within the financial services sector is greater than in any other industry as information systems - with large-scale infrastructure, data storage and transaction requirements - are central to its operations. This makes energy sourcing, usage and pricing important management issues.

Funded by Fujitsu, the report quantifies current practices to better understand the role IT can play in maximising energy efficiencies and enabling organisation-wide transformation to return significant cost savings to the industry.

Alison Rowe, Global Sustainability Executive Director, Fujitsu Group, said: “The results of our benchmarking survey provide an invaluable international perspective on global best practice trends and enable comparisons within countries against similar organisations. The data reveals the potential for green IT to provide the next set of tools which IT management can leverage for critical energy and cost savings, as well as the flow-on effect of environmental improvement.”

The research compared the green IT maturity of financial services institutions in the four countries under five categories:

• Life cycle (procurement and disposal)
• End-user IT efficiencies
• Enterprise and data centre IT efficiencies
• Use of IT as a low-carbon enabler
• Measurement and monitoring

The four countries’ financial services sectors were ranked UK first with a score of 63.8, USA at 60.3, Australia at 53.9 and India at 51.1.
And the sector’s performance was also ranked against other industries using the green IT benchmark. Overall, the financial services sector performed just above the average, scoring 57.3 against the top-rated ICT sector at 62.6.

Fujitsu sees this as providing broad and positive opportunities for improvement, with enormous potential for green IT to supply critical energy efficiencies and cost savings to the sector.

Analysis of the data identifies that metrics is the area which can provide the greatest improvement. Measurement is a precondition to effective energy and emissions management. The sector will also benefit from greater strategic migration to the efficiencies of scale and energy-saving practices of data centres and cloud.

Rowe said: “At Fujitsu we take our responsibilities for promoting global environmental action very seriously. We also understand that our customers must underpin this action with clear economic benefits. Information of this breadth and calibre provides baseline data to assist managers develop strategies to drive change for large-scale, significant impact.”

Fujitsu has a long-term commitment to the annual production of the Green IT Global Benchmark Research. By reporting the measurement of practices and attitudes over time, these green IT surveys will track the progress of change. The research will also document the evolving maturity of green IT and assist in defining best practice. “A score of 75-80 should be the target across every component of the survey,” Rowe said.

The global benchmark is based on detailed research, conducted by Connection Research and RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia), of more than 630 CIOs and senior IT managers across industry sectors in the four countries.

Australian results

With a score of 53.9, Australia’s financial services sector fell well short of those achieved in the UK and USA, though slightly higher than India.

In Australia, the only country of the four where data has been collated in the previous two years, the financial services industry has improved from one of the lowest performing sectors to now being at the cross-industry average, on par with government, ICT and manufacturing.

The results show the Australian financial sector is only in the early stages of reaping the benefits of quick wins at the end-user level but using IT for sustainable business at the broader enterprise and enablement levels will result in considerable improvement.

The area of most concern within the Australian context is its very low metrics score. Without the ability to measure baseline performance, savings and progress cannot be identified.

Rowe said, “Australian financial institutions can take from this study the quantifiable value in implementing green IT techniques and technologies.”