By Enterprise Innovation Editors | Jul 24, 2009

The current global economic recession has squeezed IT budgets, hindered capital expenditure and generally slowed the growth of IT development. However, according to a Datamonitor report, ‘Can Green IT Bloom in an Economic Downturn’, it may also prove to be a significant upside to the market for green IT.

“The recession has spurred a paradigm shift in the way organizations evaluate, budget for and deploy green IT”, says Rhonda Ascierto, senior analyst at Datamonitor and the report’s author. “The downturn has also resulted in green IT trends for datacenters, client devices and asset lifecycle management, as well as re-shaped return on investment (ROI) models.”

Green IT that eliminates capital expenditure is increasing in demand
Current green IT investments are driven by compliance with environmental legislation and cost savings. In particular, green IT that eliminates the need for capital expenditure (capex), such as datacenter virtualization, datacenter design and layout, and asset lifecycle management, has become increasingly important as IT budgets remain constrained.

Datamonitor research shows IT budgets are likely to remain flat in 2009, which means cost-effective green IT is likely to increase in demand. As such, organizations no longer regard green IT and cost-effective IT as being mutually exclusive. This represents a significant paradigm shift and bodes well for the future evolution of the global green IT market.