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Organizations Increasingly Alert to the ‘Green IT’ Agenda but Lack Awareness of the Appropriate Energy Saving Solutions, European Survey Reveals

Almost two-thirds of organizations either have or are developing plans to reduce their energy and emissions caused by their use of technology, a BEA commissioned survey reveals

Core News Facts

1. Almost two-thirds of organizations have or are developing plans to reduce energy and emissions caused by their use of technology, a European survey commissioned by BEA reveals.
2. Organizations are delaying investment, partly because of cost but also because of a lack of awareness concerning the appropriate energy saving solutions.
3. Survey uncovers an acute lack of awareness among European organizations concerning virtualization—a key enabler of the ‘green data center’.

LONDON—March 10, 2008—BEA Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: BEAS) a world leader in enterprise infrastructure software, today revealed that European organizations are increasingly alert to the ‘Green IT’ agenda, but lack an understanding of what environmental technology options are available to them.  Almost two-thirds of organizations that responded to the Sustainable IT Survey 2008 commissioned by BEA either have or are developing plans to reduce their energy and emissions caused by their use of technology, the priorities being to reduce IT power consumption and cut utility costs. 

However, the survey also shows that organizations are discouraged to invest, partly owing to the obvious cost implications but also because of a lack of knowledge concerning the specific technology solutions available to them.  The survey uncovers an acute lack of awareness among European organizations about virtualization—a means of consolidating computing resources—despite this technology being a key enabler of the ‘green data center’.

“It is heartening to see a rising trend among European organizations to adopt sustainable, green IT strategies,” says Martin Percival, Senior Technology Evangelist, EMEA, BEA Systems.  “However, despite more organizations adopting plans to reduce energy and emissions caused by the use of IT, it is apparent that many are not aware of the practical technology solutions available today that will help deliver the environmental efficiency they seek.  For those organizations actively associated with green IT initiatives, the adoption of hardware, server, or Java virtualization techniques will help form the four R’s of responsible IT provision: reduce, reuse, recycle, and re-engineer.”

The survey highlights significant variation in the maturity of European organizations’ green IT initiatives.  Twenty-seven percent already have a plan in place to reduce energy and emissions caused by their use of IT.  Ten percent have a plan ready, but it’s not in place yet; a further 22 percent are working on a plan; whereas 33 percent currently have no plans at all to reduce IT energy and emissions.  The survey also highlighted some interesting anomalies among European countries.  Forty-seven percent of organizations in the Netherlands, for example, have a plan already in place to reduce energy emissions caused by IT, or are on the cusp of launching one—compared with 29 percent of organizations in the Nordics, and 33 percent of German organizations.

For those organizations with plans in place, there are a number of pressures driving the implementation of their green IT initiatives.  Fifty-five percent cite rising energy costs as the prime motivator, followed by corporate social responsibility (cited by 45 percent), regulatory compliance (cited by 41 percent), and storage capacity (cited by 15 percent).

Reducing technology waste and recycling are the key environmental priorities for these European organizations.  The second goal is the efficient management of utility energy, such as data center heating and lighting, according to 49 percent of European organizations.  Reducing IT power consumption is the third priority, cited by 46 percent of respondents.  A number of fundamental issues are inhibiting their introduction though.  Apart from cost (cited by 53 percent), the overwhelming constraint is a lack of understanding about what is available (cited by 23 percent), a lack of suitable products (cited by 16 percent), and a lack of support from the Board or senior management (cited by 16 percent).  From a country perspective, 70 percent of French organizations cite cost as the inhibitor, compared with only 35 percent in The Netherlands.

The survey also asked respondents about virtualization.  This has a key role to play in enabling the ‘green data center’: by reducing the volume of servers, virtualization reduces energy usage, enables the fuller use of underutilized computing resources, and translates into a longer life for the data center—with less strain on the environment.  However, when asked on a scale of one to five how aware respondents were about virtualization, 39 percent are ‘not very aware’, with only seven percent being ‘very aware’.  Awareness of virtualization is also geographically polarized: the proportion of UK organizations aware of the technology is between two and three times higher than it is in Germany and The Netherlands.

The overwhelming benefit of virtualization is reduced costs, cited as ‘very important’ by 41 percent of respondents.  The second more important perceived benefit is that it enables servers to work more efficiently (cited as ‘very important’ by 34 percent of respondents).  The third benefit is increased agility and the ability for an infrastructure to react to peaks in demand (cited as ‘very important’ by 22 percent of respondents).

In response to the issues arising from this pan-European survey, BEA has a number of resources available to customers including a virtualization Total Cost of Ownership Calculator which lets you analyze the financial implications of moving to a virtualized architecture for your enterprise Java applications available at www.bea.com/virtualization and a customer case study available here.

The BEA Sustainable IT Survey 2008 was conducted by Vanson Bourne, Technology Market Research Specialists during January 2008 among 480 respondents in 12 countries.  The countries participating in the survey were Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK.  The Survey polled respondents in the Financial Services, Public Sector, and Telecommunications sectors.

To download a copy of the Sustainable IT White Paper from BEA, please visit http://eu.bea.com/sustainableIT

About BEA Systems, Inc.

BEA Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: BEAS) is a world leader in enterprise infrastructure software.  Information about how BEA helps customers build a Liquid Enterprise™ that transforms their business can be found at bea.com.

Contact Information

David Milsom
GolinHarris for BEA
020 7067 0632
dmilsom@golinharris.com

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