IT chiefs claim budgets will rise to pay for green initiatives

Despite reports of contracting IT budgets at many UK firms, almost a third of IT chiefs expect to see budgets increase to support green IT initiatives and a quarter expect these rises to be in excess of 10 per cent.

That is the finding of a major survey of 200 UK IT directors and more than 1,200 general employees released today by networking giant Cisco, which found that IT departments are facing growing pressure to improve their environmental performance.

The YouGov survey revealed that 61 per cent of IT leaders now regard environmental sustainability as a key issue, while 44 per cent work for firms where it is seen as a board-level concern.

Speaking at a roundtable event to mark the launch of the research, Jo Causon, director of marketing and corporate affairs at the Chartered Management Institute, said that IT departments could expect to face growing pressure from the rest of the business to deliver greener systems over the coming decade.

"All our research points to the fact that employees increasingly want to work for firms they believe in the values of and are confident are behaving ethically," she said. "Over the next 10 years, greener approaches such as home working will become commonplace and IT will be key to delivering that."

David Meads, operations director for Cisco in the UK and Ireland, said that there was compelling evidence that increased budgets for green technologies were beginning to impact purchasing decisions, most notably in the success of the company's TelePresence video conferencing suite.

The high-definition video conferencing suites can cost up to £500,000, but Meads said the company had taken orders for 500 units from 100 different firms in the past 18 months and expected to see continued strong demand for the technology.

He added that customer feedback showed firms were generating significant cost and carbon savings by using the suites to replace face-to-face meetings that would require executives to travel.

"At Cisco we reckon we've saved $100m (£51m) in travel costs internally by undertaking more than 14,000 meetings using TelePresence, " he said.

Currently, video conferencing suites are primarily used by large scale multinationals, but Meads argued that the technology will become increasingly pervasive as the price point begins to fall.

"With ultra high-speed broadband now going into the home it is only matter of time before these types of technologies are being used by all size of businesses," he predicted.