Half of 738 companies responding to a Forrester Research survey in April said they consider green criteria during their IT-procurement process, and four out of five have recycling programs. IT leaders and organizations can increase their influence by helping businesses curb their environmental impact, not only from IT equipment and operations, but also from other business processes, Forrester VP Christopher Mines said in the report.

That is, the role of services companies is no less than that of equipment providers in making the world greener.

This “go green” trend has led to a development of a lot of new Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Currently, in India, there are around 513 SEZs that have been approved by various state governments, of which 250 have already been notified under the SEZ Act 2005, and over 150 of them are designed to suit the needs of IT and IT-enabled services industry. Earlier this year, WNS took its first step toward turning carbon-neutral and launched a “The Green Lean Sigma Program,” which will include setting up of overall objectives and strategy to drive the program globally.

Interestingly, the research reveals that by adopting green initiatives in data centers across the globe only
2 percent of the current ecological issues can be solved. The challenge for the providers is to improvise these initiatives at the customer site, and further spread awareness so that even they can derive the cost and energy saving benefits. IBM on Aug. 18th, 2008 launched Green Sigma to assist its customers lower their environmental impact, increase efficiency and reduce costs by applying Lean Six Sigma principles to energy and water usage throughout their operations.

“Companies are making investments, and last year in U.S. alone over $3 billion were invested in green initiatives by companies. It is not just the corporate social responsibility but also the business need to turn green,” says Kothandaraman Karunagaran, Director, Infrastructure Services, CSC India.

Key IT-BPO Players & the Recent Green Initiatives
Company	Green Activity
Accenture	Introduced Green Technology Suite to help organizations  use IT to assess and improve green agenda in July ’08
WNS	Launched Green Lean Sigma Program in Feb. ’08 to move toward  carbon neutralization
IBM	Introduced IBM “Green Sigma” Consulting
ACS	Launched a white paper “Shades of Green: The Business  Approach” stating the green policies at ACS
HP	Partnered with Xtreme Energetics (XE), a solar energy system  developer based in Livermore, for the development of a solar  energy system designed to generate electricity at twice the  efficiency and half the cost of traditional solar panels
Wipro	Joined The Green Grid, a global consortium dedicated to advancing  energy efficiency in data centers and business computing eco  systems. Wipro’s other recent accomplishments include receiving  U.S. Green Building Council Certification for two of the company’s  existing facilities
Patni	New green IT-BPO in Noida, India.
Source: Global Services