Image-Conscious Industry More Aware Due to Press, Celebrities, and Consumer
Demand to Go Green, According to BPM Forum, Rackable Systems and Intel Report
PALO ALTO, CA (February 24, 2009) A nearly unanimous 99 percent of IT
professionals feel that it is important for their digital media & entertainment
industry-related businesses to reduce their carbon footprint, and most are
becoming much more aware of ecological issues due to recent press, celebrity
involvement, and consumer demand. Despite these pressures, 76 percent give the
industry average or poor grades in their progress towards embracing so-called
Think Eco-Logical processes and practices.
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 (NASDAQ: RACK) and Intel, around a
comprehensive online survey and executive dialogs including insights from over
100 IT professionals. The new report is part of a Think Eco-Logical initiative
to educate companies on the need to address both the environmental side (Eco) of
IT sustainability imperatives and the economics (Logical) of achieving
environmental efficiencies in the data center.
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.
Contact Information:
Press Contact
Mark DiCello, GlobalFluency
650-433-4161
mdicello@globalfluency.com
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