Consider this:

Most people now agree that the world is moving into an era of scarcity. The global population is set to rise from today’s 6 Billion people to 9 Billion people by 2050. We are experiencing shortages of energy, raw materials and food. We don’t need scientists to tell us it is going to get worse. Our only hope is to learn to share the planet’s scarce resources, increase utilisation and reduce waste.

Technology should be a significant part of the solution, but today is far more part of the problem with the global ICT footprint representing 2% of the world’s CO2 emissions, which is worse than the airline industry! In the case of white collar industries ICT can account for around 50% of their carbon footprint.

Corporate IT is ready for a transformation from the old model of “build, own and just use myself”, to the shared services model the technology sector has been promising us for some time. The current model is very costly and wasteful, for example, currently the average server utilisation in all the datacentres around the world is a shockingly low 6%! Thanks to the internet, and advances in technologies such as virtualisation, SaaS, grid and cloud computing, solutions are now available to help companies make a start on the journey to this brave new IT world.

The competitive landscape is changing fast. Established companies need not only consider the price of energy but also energy security, that is, whether they can guarantee a level of supply at all. They also need to understand their emissions as a ton of carbon will soon have a tradable price. They need to understand the latest energy and emissions legislation, as failure to comply carries punitive penalties.

The market must recognise that new entrant competitors are establishing themselves with all their IT provided as a service, that is, they won’t have legacy applications and their cost of doing business will be very much lower than the established players. These competitors will not only have a real cost advantage but also a distinct marketing advantage as customers will want to deal with responsible organisations.