From Waste to Efficiency: How Green IT is Transforming ITAM 

For many organizations, IT Asset Management (ITAM) is a highly effective mechanism for controlling costs and minimizing risk. When implemented to its full potential, ITAM enables companies to identify what technology has been deployed, where, and whether it’s being used. These insights enable organizations to optimize their estates, so they only pay for what they need and aren’t at risk of exceeding their licensing entitlements.  

As positive as these benefits are, they only paint a partial picture of ITAM’s overall capabilities. As organizations increasingly focus on sustainability credentials, the connection between Green IT and ITAM becomes more apparent. That’s because the same insights that help businesses control their costs and reduce their exposure to risks can also be applied to help reduce the environmental impact of their IT operations.  

Here’s how ITAM is evolving to help businesses accelerate their transition to Green IT.  

The Rise of Green IT  

Green IT – also known as sustainable IT – is growing in popularity as businesses attempt to strike a balance between innovation and the cost of running their IT operations, both from a monetary and environmental point of view. 

Why Organizations are Prioritizing Sustainability  

This comes against a background of significant political and societal change. The Paris Agreement and EU Taxonomy, together with international sustainability legislation, means organizations face increasing pressure to report on their environmental practices and are, as a consequence, now more accountable for their actions. 

However, organizations aren’t only prioritizing environmental goals because they are mandated to do so. More and more are voluntarily disclosing their Greenhouse Gas (GHG) and carbon emissions (as well as other key metrics) because they recognize this enhances their reputation with investors, customers, partners, employees, and other key stakeholders. In addition, carbon intensive activities are also high-cost activities. Controlling and reducing carbon can help organizations reduce their spend, by cutting out waste and inefficiencies. 

In other words, this increased environmental focus is good for the planet and also boosts the bottom line. 

IT is one of the areas which finds itself under the microscope as businesses try to limit their overall impact on the environment. While technological innovation is enhancing businesses and societies alike, its growth has led to considerable environmental challenges.  

To put this into context, data centers today consume between 1% and 2% of all the world’s energy, which is expected to double by the end of the decade as power-hungry AI workloads continue to grow.  Meanwhile, the world generates approximately 57 million tons of electronic waste annually, with ‘rip and replace’ often chosen over ‘reuse and recycle.’ 

 What is Green IT? 

Green IT is designed to thwart or even reverse these unwanted trends. It is the practice of designing, manufacturing, utilizing, and disposing of IT with minimal environmental impact in support of wider sustainability initiatives. 

It covers the entire IT ecosystem, including hardware, software, and cloud-based services:  

• Hardware 
  The focus is placed on sustainable design and energy efficiency, as well as recycling and reusing equipment following circular economy principles.  

• Software
  Green IT leverages Software Asset Management (SAM) to identify unnecessary licenses and to optimize deployments, lowering consumption and, with it, emissions. Metrics such as the Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) specification can help track the efficiency of software deployments. At the same time, advancements are being made to minimize idle time and reduce computational resource consumption. 

• Cloud and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Application
  

Green IT ensures the optimal utilization of resources and the overall reduction of energy consumption. Organizations can benefit from cloud providers’ scale and access to the most advanced energy-efficient technologies. FinOps takes this one step further by ensuring the ongoing management of cloud-based services, preventing over-provisioning, and restructuring architectures for optimal efficiency.  

ITAM’s Central Role in Green IT 

When an organization embarks on an ITAM program with Anglepoint, it will follow a proven methodology to assess organizational and stakeholder needs, evaluate current IT systems, and optimize the infrastructure and operations before entering a phase to monitor and adjust operations so it is continually optimized. 

This same methodology – when aligned with FinOps principles and ISO standards – can also be applied to the process of transitioning companies to Green IT, making IT asset management a key enabler of Green IT. 

By applying ITAM practices to Green IT, companies can enhance sustainability initiatives by understanding their unique program requirements, gathering data on the efficiency and energy consumption of its IT estate, developing an action plan to make improvements (for example, by right-sizing, decommissioning or extending the life of equipment, software and cloud services), and then reporting on and refining processes to ensure progress. 

These energy consumption reports are particularly important in reaching IT sustainability goals. Not only do they allow a company to show improvements to key stakeholders, but they also help fulfil mandatory reporting requirements for agencies such as: 

•  EU Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) 
• The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP)
  

However, accurate reporting requires clean, trustworthy data, an area where organizations often struggle. Not only does this undermine an organization’s ability to produce credible reports, but inaccurate reporting could also hurt their wider sustainability efforts. Ultimately, best practice data collection, cleaning, and ongoing management—all key pillars of an effective ITAM program—eliminate the problems associated with incomplete, inconsistent, and inaccurate data. This is vital as companies continue adopting and strengthening their Green IT approaches. 

How Anglepoint can help 

Anglepoint’s dedicated Green IT experts can help organizations take a holistic approach to minimizing their environmental footprint, combining ITAM best practices with deep regulatory expertise to manage the transition to an innovative yet more sustainable future.