Stop Buying Hardware! - by Peter Judge

Views and Opinions on Green IT (Jun 21 2010)

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   Sometimes you hear an idea that takes a complex idea and simplifies it nicely, A colleague of mine came up with one the other day.

   Just stop buying hardware, is the suggestion from eWEEK writer Andrew Donoghue.

   Andrew decided this month that he won’t upgrade an item of personal tech - his phone, TV and so forth - unless he needs to because it is worn out or broken. Now he’s asking why that same rule shouldn’t apply to business IT. 

   In some ways this is nothing new. Government IT gurus whose green credentials go deeper than simply buying the kit with the biggest green claims, have been pushing the idea of “sweating IT assets” for some time. The amount of energy used and the environmental impact of building a new server is often higher than the amount of energy it would use.

   But suppose you never bought more hardware? Stop buying servers and (where the strictures of your business allow) outsource it all to third parties - who you can assume run their servers more efficiently than you would.

   “No New Servers!” would be a good slogan to adopt, encapsulating a vision of freedom.

   And stop buying laptops. Your employees would prefer to have an allowance to use their own kit (and set that allowance fairly so it doesn’t encourage excess buying sprees).

   Stand up to companies like Microsoft, who attempt to drive upgrades by phasing out support (for instance  for Windows XP on older systems). If your resistance means taking up other options like open source, then go for it. There are other benefits to the move.

   And apply the same thing to mobile devices. You probably already don’t buy phones. Even if you provide them for your employees, the phones will probably be on a contract, so the operator looks after the hardware (at least round here).

   As well as stopping buying new hardware, we could try to stop buying “new” energy. Where possible stop releasing energy  from oil and coal, at the expense of the planet, and use energy that comes from cleaner sources.

   It’s counter-productive to chastise companies for using oil or coal powered electricity, sure. But if you actually can build a data center that only uses renewable sources (as Welsh company Next Generation Data (NGD) claims to have done) then it’s surely a good thing to do so.

   I’m sitting at a PC that was freed up by a neighbour company downsizing, and writing this blog on a Google server.

   I replaced my very old home PC this week, when several components wore out - but the old machine is getting reconditioned and donated, either to the developing world, or to local kids or charities.

   And my tech bits and pieces are easily disposed of, either on eBay or through local sharing resource, Freecycle.

   So read my lips: No New Hardware.

   
   

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