In case you missed these blog posts earlier in the week, here’s a quick recap. On Tuesday, we ran an infographic about green IT (courtesy of SEO.com). It sketches out the potential benefits of more efficient infrastructure by breaking down just how much things we don’t even think about have an impact on the environment. You know those YouTube clips of dogs climbing trees that your friends forward you? Well, it turns out that YouTube can spend up to $470 million in energy costs annually to deliver those power-intensive videos to its users. That’s the equivalent of building and upgrading 226 miles of highway. So often we just click without thinking. Now, no one’s saying we should deprive ourselves of animal-induced hilarity, but we should look at creating IT efficiencies wherever we can.
And speaking of efficiency, on Wednesday, we ran a blog post about roadblocks the federal government faces as agencies begin to move data into the cloud. In his time as the White House’s first chief information officer, Vivek Kundra (who will speak at Dell World in October) devised the “Cloud First” policy, which encourages agencies to use the cloud for new projects to cut costs. Now that Kundra has left government for academia, agency officials are struggling to balance the quest for efficiency in a difficult economic climate with the need to address security concerns. According to a recent New York Times story, since the U.S. government is the largest consumer of technology projects in the world – spending $80 billion annually – the issue will resonate in the public sector as well. From an IT perspective, it’s something to keep an eye on.