In the last weeks we’ve been thinking about energy consumption.

 As a company (www.qhuba.com) we’re nearly CO2 neutral, but we’ve a long way to go to eek out the last parts of CO2 and even further if you consider all waste issues.

Talking to someone from the Dutch government focussed on the environment, it has become more clear that the political solution will wait for itself, and is not likely to help us with innovative ideas on how to become more environmentally sound.

My understanding has changed my views from ’cut down on this and that’ to ’replace what you take’. This is a fundamental difference. It’s helped me understand why we as a company have many hectares of forest which compensates for our CO2 use. We’re not actually cutting down on CO2, we’re replacing what we use.

So now on to the waste mangement part: We initially thought we’d start cutting down on what we use once we understood what that meant. I’ve heard an estimate of 140 litres of water begin required to make 1 cup of coffee. Would good stewardship then mean I have to give up my coffee? If so, what do I replace it with? Water?

 The solution lies elsewhere. Replace what you use, don’t try to cut down on stuff unless there are clear other benefits (e.g. cost).

So how do we translate this to IT?

Is there some way that we can say “replace old CPU power with new CPU power, but only to the extent you actually use it?” Hang on, that sounds a lot like consolidation through virtualisation.

Maybe there is something in this idea at all.

What about “only open ports that you actually use”. Wow, we’ve just described one of the key security policies.

And I suppose now, in the face of all the new wealth in features coming with new products, we should take a really good look at what we’re using, and determine if there is actually a need to move.

IT devices are not necessarily old washing machines. Just because they’re older, the documents you edit and the transactions you do using your IT are not of lesser quality.

You decide.