DELL Gets Green Facelift

Dell is rolling out several green initiatives as part of its overall business strategy, said Eric Greffier, Dell director for developing solutions and services, EMEA.

During the ITWeb Green IT Summit held in Bryanston, this week, Greffier outlined what Dell is doing to make the IT giant more eco-friendly and what other companies can do. He pointed out that a green initiative needs to be supported and managed at the highest level of the company.
Dell has started its packaging reduction plan, which Greffier suggested will result in an estimate cost saving of more than $8 million and eliminate approximately 20 million pounds of packaging material. In addition, from last year November, Dell implemented LED technology for all its laptops, which consumes 43% less power.

Geared for green

“In a survey with the IDC, we [Dell] found that 34% of our EMEA customers already have a green IT strategy and 15% plan to adopt a green IT strategy within 24 months,” said Greffier.

He added: “74% of respondents are turning to green IT for cost savings. Around 72% of respondents are going green for regulatory compliance and 68% of respondents aim to reach a sustainable level of energy consumption.”The top five hurdles to rolling out an effective green IT strategy, according to Greffier, are the lack of in-house skills, insufficient time to implement a green IT strategy, lack of green IT measurements, and lack of industry guidance on green IT.

The purpose of the Basel Convention, which came into effect in 1992, has been to curb the dumping of toxic waste by first world countries into developing countries. Greffier said Dell plans to remove PVCs from its technology by 2012, as part of the Basel commitment.

Greffier added that the world is reaching a data tsunami, with the proliferation of mobile and peripheral devices. By 2010 data is expected to grow to reach 988 exabytes (one billion gigabytes).

“There will be a billion laptops in the next five years. Every second, two new blogs are created, four cellphones are purchased, seven PCs are sold, 1 200 videos are viewed on YouTube, 11 000 songs are shared and 1 000 000 e-mails are sent.”

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