E N V I R O N M E N T
assessment showed that the ICT industry Gartner and WWF invited 24 global ICT The survey revealed that Fujitsu, HP and IBM
overall has been slow to embrace the low providers to participate. Fifteen chose to have a well-structured, balanced, long-term
carbon economy despite the tremendous participate, all of whom, says Gartner, should environmental plan that demonstrates a level
opportunities that will be presented to the be recognised for their transparency. Nine of commitment across the business. When it
industry, such as smart buildings and grid providers, namely Accenture, Acer, AT&T, comes to managing the supply chain, taking
applications and travel substitution. Deutsche Telekom, EDS, Microsoft, Oracle, into account the provider’s visibility and
Sun and TCS chose not to participate. assurance into it, Nokia excelled, and IBM
Simon Mingay, research vice president at and BT have both focused on their Tier 1
Gartner, presented the findings of the Gartner Of the vendors that did respond, Fujitsu, providers (their direct providers) and engaged
and WWF’s assessment of global low carbon BT, HP and IBM did well in virtually every significantly with their Tier 2 suppliers (‘sub-
leadership of the ICT industry during the category, while others such as Wipro, Nortel, tier’ or sub-contractors or the suppliers of their
Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2008, held in Verizon, China Mobile, and Lenovo did not direct suppliers) and beyond. Cisco, China
Cannes, France. score particularly well. Gartner reveals there Mobile, Lenovo, Dell and Google all scored
were some surprises. For example, Google relatively poorly. “They do not have the level
“This is a unique industry report - the first has some room for improvement on basic of visibility and assurance of good practice
of its kind that examines the commitment environmental practices, supply chain and that we would expect and fall well short of the
of large ICT providers to reducing the solutions for low carbon economy. leaders,” judges Mingay.
environmental impact of their business
operations, their supply chain and that The findings also showed that IT service The Gartner/WWF report suggests that
of their products and services,” organisations are quite immature in their Google does not have an environmental policy.
observes Mingay. environmental programmes and their Nortel and Cisco possess environmental
innovation for a low carbon economy. policies that are ‘…bland and non-committal
Most of such organisations have been very compared to BT’s policy, which is specific,
slow to recognise their changing market challenging and linked to key performance
circumstances and the changing risks and indicators (KPIs)’.
opportunities associated with climate change.
Gartner reckons only a few of these IT According to Dennis Pamlin, global policy
service providers have really thought through advisor at WWF, the biggest challenge in
the implications of a low carbon economy moving an organisation forward strategically
for their own operations or the potential to address climate change and environmental
opportunities it represents for their own sustainability is to ensure a shift from reactive
business. to proactive and make low carbon solutions a
driver for innovation and profit. HP, BT, IBM
and Fujitsu did well in this area and all have
“Current trends in energy
relatively sophisticated programmes related to
low carbon solutions.
supply and consumption are
But, like it or not, the remainder of the ICT
community – along with most other types
of enterprise - are going to have to come up
with proactive and strategic green/greener
patently unsustainable -
plans. “Current trends in energy supply and
consumption are patently unsustainable
– environmentally, economically and socially
– they can and must be altered,” concluded
environmentally, economically
Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of
the International Energy Agency
(IEA) at the November launch
and socially - they can and
of the ‘World Energy
Outlook (WEO) 2008’.
must be altered”,
 I
CONVERGENCE WORLD 
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