Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
non-living natural systems (including ecosystems,
land, air and water) and outputs (e.g. harmful
emissions and wastages). They cover performance
to biodiversity, environmental compliance and
other relevant information such as environmental
expenditures and their impacts on products and
services. The business strategy should integrate
long-term economic and environmental aspects
and the evaluations based on the indicators
ought to be utilized in further business strategy
re-formulation. IT governance for sustainability
means a balance among the economic activities
and environmental responsibilities (including
social responsibility). Although business orga-
nizations are oriented towards creating value for
the company's shareholders, the environmental
responsibility is equally important. Economic
indicators include measures of a competitive re-
turn on investment, of protecting the company's
assets and enhancing the company's reputation
and brand image through integration of sustainable
development thinking with business practices.
Building capacity for further economic devel-
opment, supporting the protection and efficient
exploitation of IT resources, promoting positive
attitude of employees towards energy consumption
monitoring and controlling of IT assets should also
be considered. The business organization should
make a distinction between IT strategy and IT
management. IT strategy is an objective, but IT
management approach is a process accompanied
by actions. Talking about strategy as an organiza-
tional capability means strategy management i.e.
the constant renewal of strategy to align and keep
pace with the evolution of customer and market-
place needs. New information technology expands
the business strategy, because it uncovers the new
opportunities that organization can explore i.e. IT
resources virtualization. Following Mintzberg and
Queen (1991), the strategy is considered as a plan.
The general plan for IT resources virtualization
could cover the steps:
•
Understanding the benefits of virtualiza-
tion, so issues like saving money, simpli-
fication of management, disaster recovery
opportunities, emissions' reduction should
be analyzed,
•
Evaluating a virtualization solution, and
selecting the right services providers,
•
Verification if applications are going to
work properly with virtualization,
•
Analyzing the cost of virtualization of
server infrastructure,
•
Analyzing the time and capabilities needed
to virtualize the IT resources i.e. server,
storage, desktops.
However, given a vision to achieve sustain-
able IT resources virtualization development, the
following principles are applied:
•
Continual refinement of the products
and project practices (assuming that IT
resources virtualization has been done
through projects),
•
Working products and services at all times,
•
Continual investment in and emphasis on
design,
•
Valuing defect prevention over defect de-
tection (Tate, 2005).
IT products and services for sustainability
should always be in a state of continual con-
struction as any working prototypes. This ap-
proach allows increasing the products' quality.
Properly working products are also required for
sustainable development because it ensures that
the manufacturing time was spent on productive
activities. A constant emphasis on designs should
also be required for sustainable development
because innovative technologies, good designs
and sustainable design practices extend the life
of the products by keeping their exploitation in a
healthy state, which simplify the maintainability
processes.
