Financial Services Sector has Greatest Potential for Green IT to Supply Critical Energy Efficiencies & Cost Savings

The Green IT: The Financial Services Industry Benchmark report, launched globally by Fujitsu today, contains the findings of the first multi-country survey to determine the maturity of Green IT practices and technologies within banking, finance and insurance organisations in the UK, the USA, India and Australia.

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 Financial Services Green IT Benchmark 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.

uliet Silvester, head of corporate responsibility programmes at Fujitsu UK & Ireland, 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:

• Lifecycle (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 “measurement and monitoring” 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 superior energy saving practices of data centres and cloud.

Silvester 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,” Silvester said.

he 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.

The downloadable report is available here.

The UK leads the four regions surveyed with a score of 63.8 as a result of the combination of the sophistication of the sector’s IT systems and the country’s stringent environmental regulations. Its End User component of 69.3 is exceptionally high and indicates efficiency implementations have moved from quick wins to longer term Green IT benefits from End User Enablement.

Alan Edwards, head of client engagement and consulting at Fujitsu UK & Ireland, said: “This world-leading survey provides critical information for IT management in the financial services sector to continue building momentum for greater efficiencies and environmental improvement.”