These are among the many findings in an executive report: "Think
Eco-Logical - IT Sustainability Imperatives in Digital Media &
Entertainment Business" by The BPM Forum and its Global Renewable Energy
and Environmental Network (GREEN) in conjunction with Rackable Systems
(
According to a UCLA study, California's film industry is the state's second largest polluter, with only the oil industry having a greater negative impact on the environment. However, according to the BPM Forum study, more than 53 percent of companies don't have or don't know if they have a corporate sustainability agenda in place. And lack of awareness of business benefits was identified as the top challenge to environmental sustainability.
The report shows some positive signs as IT executives become more actively aware and engaged in ecological issues:
-- 88 percent say it's important to have Eco-Logical servers
-- 90 percent have begun to implement Think Eco-Logical activities to
some extent in their organization
-- Top potential benefits of ecological practices are reduced
power/cooling costs (79 percent), social responsibility (73 percent), and
positive PR (62 percent)
-- 80 percent say the digital media & entertainment industry is more
sensitized towards the move to Thinking Eco-Logical than they were a year
ago
The data shows, however, that while the digital media industry understands the benefits, there are significant perceived obstacles in adopting Think Eco-logical practices, such as an unwillingness to compromise technology productivity (60 percent), costs of efficiencies (58 percent) and lack of awareness of benefits (50 percent).
"Media businesses are facing huge increases in IT infrastructure and storage capacity requirements as entertainment and distribution go increasingly digital," said Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director of the BPM Forum. "Public and industry peer pressure to act ecologically is mounting in parallel, and it's time that these companies take swift action with green practices not only to maintain a positive image, but to drive improvements to their bottom line."
With huge production facilities and distribution networks pushing massive amounts of data -- downloads, streaming video, renderings, animation, etc. -- digital media & entertainment companies stand to gain huge benefits from ecological improvements to IT infrastructure. Coughlin Associates, a data storage consulting group, predicts a 10X increase in required digital storage capacity and over 8X growth in storage capacity shipments per year by 2012 in the digital media & entertainment industry.
"We are encouraged that the awareness levels are higher to make change in greening the data center within digital media," said George Skaff, vice president of marketing at Rackable Systems. "We think that there are real efficiency benefits that can be achieved by these companies in the short term to overcome their perceived obstacles and to achieve the desired environmental, social, and economic benefits."
"The Think Eco-Logical campaign promotes real world business benefits and environmental sustainability," said Lorie Wigle, General Manager Intel® Eco-Technology. "Rackable Systems, Intel and others in the industry are developing energy-efficient, high-performance solutions that will help companies reach Think Eco-Logical goals."
Think Eco-Logical Internet Report Available for Download
The "Think Eco-Logical - IT Sustainability Imperatives in Digital Media & Entertainment Business" report is available for download at http://www.rackable.com/thinkecological/media-ent-report-download.html.
For more information on the Think Eco-Logical initiative visit thinkecological.rackable.com.
About the BPM Forum
The Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum is dedicated to advancing performance accountability, process improvement, operational visibility and compliance in global organizations. It provides support to thousands of senior executives and practitioners representing enterprises with more than $500 billion in combined annual revenues. The BPM Forum's C-level members engage in research, thought leadership, and knowledge exchange programs around a variety of strategic issues and challenges. More information is available at: www.bpmforum.org.
About Rackable Systems
Rackable Systems, Inc. is a leading provider of Eco-Logical™ servers and storage for medium to large-scale data center deployments. The company's products, available for purchase or lease, are designed to provide benefits in the areas of density, thermal efficiency, serviceability, power distribution, data center mobility and remote management. Founded in 1999 and based in Fremont, California, Rackable Systems is a founding member of The Green Grid and serves cloud computing and services, enterprise software, federal government, digital media, financial services, oil and gas exploration and HPC customers worldwide. To learn more about Rackable Systems and this initiative, visit www.rackable.com.
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Press Contact Mark DiCello GlobalFluency 650-433-4161 Email Contact
