Strategic Business Trends in the Context of Green ICT

The adoption of Green ICT by business is far more than just the acquisition of low-carbon emitting solutions, green hardware and implementing software to switch-off computers in periods of inactivity. Although such changes are necessary actions, Green ICT is about a strategic business transformation in response to both markets and legislation because it is good for business. Such transformation requires a redefinition of business processes, a realignment of information exchange, integration of unified communication, and above all, changing the business model to align with evolving business trends and market opportunities. Beyond the marketing benefits that accrue to a business from the use of Green ICT, the adoption of Green ICT allows businesses to lower costs and improve service delivery, while simultaneously addressing environmental footprint. Operational gains and market opportunities are the business drivers to overcome the incumbency of replacing utility infrastructure and the knowledge worker assembly line that ICT provides to business. This chapter discusses aspects of the strategic business transformation associated with the adoption of Green ICT within businesses, including the significance of information exchange for green business operations.

Understanding the Context of Green ICT

Green ICT can be considered as the adoption of eco-friendly processes by an organization in its practice of Information and Communication Technologies. The last decade, in particular, has seen profound awareness on the part of individuals as well as organizations in adopting such processes that are environmentally friendly. While automation and related computing activities continue to lead to exponential use of energy quotient, Green ICT continues to chip away at the ‘resigned‘ views of the decision makers to their environmental responsibilities. It is vital today to understand the increasing importance and the context provided by ICT in helping prove the green credentials of an organization. ICT operates at systems and applications level; at the end-user level through the desktops and printers; and at the enterprise level through its data centers, servers and other infrastructure. Green ICT is all about optimization and improvement of the organization’s operational processes without hindering its progress in use of technology. This chapter discusses the context provided by ICT in helping an organization to prove its green credentials. The issues discussed in this chapter include hardware and software implementations, infrastructures, attitudes and policies of decision makers, and how they influence global warming. Therefore, it includes carbon emissions, and the use of software applications in measuring and reporting carbon emissions.

Sustainable Business Initiatives in the Context of Emerging Economies

Emerging economies, becoming popular under the acronym of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China), are facing unique challenges related to sustainability. The challenges faced by these economies are quite different to those faced by developed economies such as UK, USA and Australia. These differences arise – from the BRIC perspective – due to the lack of existing infrastructure, potential for huge growth in the markets, need for greater awareness from the consumers and the challenges in implementing regulatory compliances. Improving the performance of organizations and industries in which they exist is a crucial step towards achieving control and improving sustainability. This chapter outlines and discusses issues and challenges related to implementing green concepts in emerging economies, corresponding measures and also proposes an approach to ameliorating the challenges.

Management Instruments for Sustainable Information Systems Management

The increasing dissemination of information systems (IS) into all areas of business and personal life has drawn attention to its economic, environmental and social effects. IS organizations are becoming aware that they have to take up their responsibility by thinking seriously about sustainability management for information systems. While measures for using computing resources efficiently have received considerable attention, the topic of sustainability in IS management is still lacking theoretical and conceptual foundation. As a contribution to the ongoing discussion of “Green IT”, the purpose of this chapter is to apply the concept of sustainability into the field of IS management using practical concepts such as a procedural model, the balanced scorecard and a maturity model.

Extending and Applying Business Intelligence and Customer Strategies for Green ICT

This chapter extends and applies the concepts of Business Intelligence (BI) within business to help improve its environmental performance. When BI is used to improve customer service and optimize business performance, the result can also be used to reduce the carbon footprint of the organization. Various ways to improve customer service as well as cross-selling and up-selling to customers are discussed in the context of the carbon footprint – and with suggestions to improve that footprint. This is a strategic approach to the use of BI in environmental performance – resulting in what is called Environmental Intelligence. The suggestion is to use Business intelligence to improve the overall resources usage (by reducing energy and paper usage) of the organizations without compromising on customer services. For example if the customers are serviced on first contact, the follow on activities involving multiple contacts with customers and marketing paper material could be reduced. This will provide the organizations with better customer satisfaction and also reduce the extra energy usage in developing heavy duty BI infrastructure and paper used for the marketing purpose to woo back the customers.

Communication, Information and Sustainability

This chapter, recognizing that the main communication concepts are deeply geographical in their inner nature, has the intent of introducing an analysis of the connection there should be between geography, communication, organization and sustainability. The author will use the geography of information as the main framework to detect these links and to present the analysis of a regional communication infrastructure to understand how the Internet can be pivotal to communication and local development strategies. The analysis will present regional communication policies, projects and practices to understand if these are positive or negative forces for a regional sustainable development.

Collaboration as a Key Enabler for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) Implementing Green ICT

Global competitiveness through advances in ICT is giving SMEs abilities that up until a few years ago were inconceivable. Along with increased market reach and added impact SMEs also begin to feel the pressure of becoming more ecologically friendly. Therefore, they need to establish Green ICT practices within their businesses. While these practices are relatively better resourced in large businesses, SMEs find it rather challenging to implement Green ICT practice because of their size and amount of resources they can put behind such initiative. This chapter describes how collaboration can be used as a key enabler for SMEs adopting Green ICT for their operations. Green ICT improvements are presented in the context of people, process and technology framework and individual solutions are offered along with their benefits that SMEs can readily adopt and begin their transition towards Green ICT.

Sustainable Urban Infrastructure Development in South East Asia

Many South East Asian cities have experienced substantial physical, economic and social transformations during the past several decades. The rapid pace of globalization and economic restructuring has resulted in these cities receiving the full impact of urbanization pressures. In an attempt to ease these pressures, cities such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur have advocated growth management approaches focusing especially on urban infrastructure sustainability. These approaches aim to achieve triple bottom line sustainability by balancing economic and social development, and environmental protection. This chapter evaluates three Asia-Pacific city cases, Singapore, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur, and assesses their experiences in managing their urban forms and infrastructure whilst promoting sustainable patterns of urban development.

Integrated Watershed Management for Sustainable Development

The over exploitation of natural resources (soil, water, fauna and flora) is critically affecting the social, economic and environmental needs of the current generation and is feared to risk the ability of the future generation to meet its needs. Nowadays citizens in many countries are facing severe livelihood challenges ranging from seeking for external aids for existence to massive life devastation due to natural hazards such as flooding & land slide imposing death tolls. The degradation of the natural environment imposes the threatening of life not only in those less developed nations but also life all over the globe. The problem is more pronounced in less developed countries like the Eastern Nile Catchment nations. Sustainable development is hoped nowadays to be a promising solution. In this regard integrated watershed management is a potential tool for bringing about such a promising tool, by laying better ground for sustainable development. This chapter is prepared with the intent of showing the link between integrated watershed management and sustainable development which a country envisages to reach, and the contribution of integrated watershed management to sustainable development. Various previous documents are reviewed and used as sources of information for the preparation of the write up. The author’s professional experience on the current overall natural resources condition is an added value, too. Sustainable development, which can be achieved through proper conservation and utilization of the existing resources by employing integrated watershed management, is development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,. Integrated watershed management is the process of formulation and carrying out a course of actions involving the manipulation of resources in the watershed to provide goods and services without adversely affecting the soil, water, vegetation base and other elements of the ecosystem, by employing multi-disciplinary teams.

Green Urban Planning and Design for Smarter Communities

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) changes the concept of place and social life. Researchers should find some solutions about how to combine ICT with sustainable construction to revitalize an existing neighborhood and to create a new model for growing areas especially in small cities. The objectives of this study are to search for new ways to create sustainable communities with the sustainable use of ICTs, to discuss the advantages and disadvantages and the use of ICTs in cities, to put a new approach as ‘eco-tech’ city, and to explore the potential ways of creating sustainability in practice. The study summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of the use of ICTs in cities and describes smart city and eco-tech city concepts. The following part, which is consisted of a discussion of urban planning and design, incorporating ICT for the construction of sustainable communities, explores the prospect that dehumanized communication can be ameliorated through progressive, innovative and green urban planning and design strategies.