Say "green" to most enterprise IT suppliers and they fire back with "energy". They see energy issues as the number one threat for organisations, and IT departments in particular. They also see it as their number one opportunity to hook their sales teams into your refresh cycle. The twin evils of faltering energy supplies and rising prices deliver hardware and software suppliers a chance to offer IT departments what amounts to an energy-related 'get out of jail free' card.

Dig a little deeper and each supplier will lay claim to a green agenda. As we saw in the last report in this series, some have a genuine history of environmental concern and try to be ahead of the regulators while others simply do what they are obliged to. It might help your company's own environmental credentials if you ensure that your own suppliers are credible in this respect.

Most vendors agree that IT equipment usually runs inefficiently. Servers and desktops alike only run to a fraction of their capacity yet, whether fully occupied or idle, they still gobble power. The cost of power is rising and demand for computing resources shows no sign of abating. Making IT equipment and its surrounding infrastructure more energy efficient saves money and improves your company's environmental performance.

The first step is for IT departments to figure out how much energy they use. Traditionally, this is not something they have had to worry about. Electricity is bought and paid for by facilities and accounts and a proportionate charge slapped on IT by the bean counters. Unless, or until, IT can measure its power requirements and identify exactly where the energy goes, it cannot put an effective energy saving strategy into operation.

For many organisations, this need to manage energy usage comes at the same time that the company is growing, placing increased processing demands on the IT department. These contradictory forces will be shaping the IT agenda very soon, if they are not already. One good thing is that computer power continues to grow while occupying the same amount of rack space.

If you're running a data centre, a large chunk of incoming energy goes on cooling. The next large slice is taken by the IT equipment itself. The next chunk is used by the UPS. If you are running racks of x86-based servers, the news is good because these are currently the least efficiently used pieces of equipment. And they throw out a lot of heat, which is usually wasted to the atmosphere although some companies try to put it to good use, feeding it into the space heating system, for example.

A more efficiently run server farm with a more intelligent use of cooling equipment could pay cost and environmental dividends, either by shrinking energy budgets or by enabling growth. You'll find better designed racks and cooling systems on offer. Some, such as Hewlett Packard's Dynamic Smart Cooling  can be retrofitted to existing installations.

Moving to the servers themselves, let's be generous and say that the average server is running at 20 percent capacity (estimates start at five percent). Obviously, you won't crank that up to 100 percent but, through virtualisation, 60 percent might be achievable. That's a tripling of capacity or a shrinking of the equipment and its surrounding infrastructure by two thirds.

What about consolidation? If your computer operations are spread across multiple locations, could they be brought together? To take an extreme example, IBM consolidated 150 data centres to ten and 31 networks to one. It also went from 3900 servers down to 33 mainframes running Linux. The savings were astronomical and are ongoing. Sun went through a similar exercise, slashing its data centre floor area by 80 percent and its energy usage by 65 percent. The IT folk checked out the function of every server and powered down hundreds whose function couldn't be determined.

Sun estimates that the average desktop is run at around one percent of capacity. It advocates a thin client approach using its 4 watt SunRay devices. But, regardless of whether its figure for PCs is accurate, it does raise the issue of the appropriateness of equipment. Do people need the PC power that they're given? Do they know that standby mode consumes less energy than a screen saver? Do they switch off their machines at night? In the data centre, are the servers, storage and cooling over-specified for the job at hand? Would it matter if lower-power processors or slower drives were used?

Whichever way you look, the question "is this resource appropriate for the task?" can be asked. It's not a case of fork-lifting in a new data centre, although some vendors would love that, it's about systematically considering each component in a green/energy light in advance of your next equipment refresh.

And, when the time comes to refresh, don't forget to plan for the environmentally friendly disposal of old equipment and the packaging of the new equipment. An increasing number of manufacturers will be happy to make this part of the deal.

Call it green, call it sustainability, call it environment, the name doesn't matter. The fact is that the general public has now become agitated about the issue with the result that companies have to respond. Various bits of legislation that exist now, and which are coming down the track, are bringing the issues into even sharper focus.

As IT professionals you have a responsibility to ensure that you optimise your own operations' impact on the environment. But it's a challenge to figure out where best to apply resources for the greatest impact. Do you invest in upgrading the data centre? Or do you provide new services to the organisation which enable it to reduce its own environmental impact?

According to recent research from Chatsworth Communications, environmental protection is not what motivates companies to adopt green policies. The top three motivators appear to be image, then customer pressure, then money.

Essentially, public companies don't have consciences; their primary concern is to deliver a return to their shareholders. It may be that this is best done by very publicly 'going green', thereby attracting customer loyalty. Or it may be by slashing energy-related costs. The environmental benefits are more or less a side-issue to increased profits or reduced costs.

As a prelude to more discussions about the environmental impact opportunities for IT, Freeform Dynamics decided to see what 10 major suppliers had to say on the subject. After all, one of the key elements of a green strategy is to ensure that all participants in the supply chain share the same commitments.

The first thing to note is that that vendors' green strategies are generally global. This means that different countries will react in different ways. At risk of offending people in two countries, readers based in Germany might be astonished to see companies bragging about their recycling activities while Americans might find it quite radical.

IBM boasts about its environmental programme being initiated in 1967 - long before even Small is Beautiful was written by E.F. Schumacher and also before some of the other companies in the top list were even founded. HP started product recycling in 1987 and Apple found its environmental feet in 1990. (I remember taking a briefing shortly afterwards in an office high in the Apple building, from which you could clearly see a brown photochemical haze enveloping Silicon Valley.)

It's also interesting to note the terminology used by different companies. It may reflect a natural caution by the corporate communications department. On the other hand, it might represent an attempt to mislead. If in doubt, do seek clarification.

More or less all companies talk of their commitment to something or other. Ignore that. What matters is what they're actually doing. Some say that they have policies. Again, that's very nice, but they need to have followed it with actions. So look out for active verbs, "we provide", "we conserve", "we lessen", and so on.

You can disregard "we meet all applicable government requirements." They have to, it's the law. However, if the most stringent requirements are met company-wide, then this is a good sign. Some say that they "exceed" their legal obligations. Cisco, for example, says: "Our programmes extend beyond environmental compliance...", and then explains how. This is clearly a better approach than simply meeting legal obligations.

The extreme of environmental friendliness is to return more value to the environment than is taken out. A negative carbon footprint, if you like. And no cheating by purchasing carbon credits. The Cradle to Cradle approach advocates the reuse of waste in components of equal or higher value to those from which it was recovered. That's a tough call, but some companies are trying to achieve such genuine sustainability.

A lot of companies claim to be doing the right thing, but it only applies to part of their operations. If they rely more on anecdotes than policies, plus proof, then they're possibly greenwashing and need to be checked out. ISO accreditations - 9000 and 14001 - are a good sign that they actually do have the right processes in place.

One of the problems is that even the best companies talk of visions, goals and commitments. While such public assertions are admirable, they're no substitute for measurable objectives or real evidence. Look for a 'take-back' story. Companies that do this generally give figures and, more importantly, achieve control of the recycling process thus optimising its effectiveness.

Finally, the Carbon Disclosure Project is a good place to check out most of your suppliers. They are asked to report their activities related to climate change. The volume and completeness of reporting speaks volumes. It also provides a more independent and structured view of their activities than declarations on the companies' own web sites.

By David Tebbutt, programme director, Freeform Dynamics