Gartner and WWF's Green Rating for Major Vendors

Presenters: Simon Mingay (Gartner); Dennis Pamlin (Global Policy Advisor, WWF)

For the last five months, the two presenters have been working on a vendor assessment for environmental impact. Should help us determine with whom we'd like to have strategic partnerships. Report coming out in July, but the results are "hot-off-the-presses". Will explain the framework and then present the results based on the framework. Green IT is an oxymoron, until you consider use of IT to "green" the business. "Greener" is doable. Minimize the negative impact, maximize the positive impact. 65% of IT professionals think that environmental criteria are at least as important as price as they make IT buying decisions.

Be wary of "Greenwash." Unspecific aspiration, superficial, absence of proof; framework is to provide an alternative. Framework provides insight into commitment to reducing IT impact and increasing their ability to use their technologies to reduce overall carbon footprints. It seems like this framework will be a useful for determining the green credentials of vendors. Does not tell which is the most energy efficient PC, or what materials are used.

The five sections of the questionnaire: environmental basics; supply chain basics; carbon basics; carbon delivery; carbon champions.

Response is a positive sign; use it to compare companies in similar sectors. Use it in combination with other measures to determine

Non-responders: Accenture, Acer, AT&T, Deutsche Telecom, EDS, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun, TCS. Not sure of the individual reasons why companies didn't respond, but seems likely that they didn't respond because they know the answers are not good.

The results were very interesting and it will be useful for us to go through them. It would also be useful for us to look a the framework and determine how well we would do if we were audited along the same lines. Need to get hold of the updated slides from Simon.