NEWSLETTERS
 

CIO.com updates, insights and advice on technology, management and your career.

 
 
 
LEADERSHIP
 
CIO Executive Programs
The Leader in Face-to-Face Education for Senior Executives

Offering regional and national programs, CIO (and CSO) events bring together some of the most respected names and thought leaders in information technology and security. Presented by CIOs and other senior level executives, these invitation-only programs offer timely topics and strong networking. Learn More »

 
CIO Executive Council
A Peer-Advisory Service and Professional Association for CIOs

Social Responsibility's Strategic Benefits

December 15, 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM US/Eastern (GMT-5)

Join Ed Granger-Happ, CIO of Save the Children, for a discussion of how creating an organization that is socially responsible improves staffing, retention, leadership development and overall corporate health.

Working With and Communicating to Your Board of Directors

January 13, 2009, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM US/Eastern (GMT-5)

CIO panelists who will share tips and experiences working with their boards: Twila Day of SYSCO; Jeff O'Hare, West Corp.; Marc West, formerly with H&R Block.

IT's Role in Growing Mid-Market Companies

January 14, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM ET (GMT-5)

Mid-market Council members will share their companies' stories and challenges in driving or coping with growth. Panelists represent Veterinary Pet Insurance, Medicis Pharmaceutical, and Intrax Cultural Exchange.

More / Register »

Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »



 
 
RESOURCE CENTER
 
 
 
SUBSCRIBE TO CIO
 
Are you involved in setting the direction for your company's IT budget or strategy?

Apply today for a FREE subscription to CIO Magazine!

 
 
 

Green IT at Washington Mutual Saves Lots of Green (Money) -- and Electricity and Trees, Too

CIO Debora Horvath is leading a cross-functional effort to cut WaMu's computing costs and environmental impact. Here's how WaMu got started, takes advantage of its green-thinking employees and is already saving millions.

 

May 21, 2008CIO — Like her CIO peers, Washington Mutual's Debora Horvath has that unfiltered, end-to-end view of her company's operations that all IT executives possess.

To her credit (and perhaps as a result of her accumulated experience), Horvath is drawing on every bit of that enterprisewide visibility to help her in another critical role she plays at Washington Mutual: chairing the bank's burgeoning environmental council's efforts to cut its carbon emissions, reduce power costs and become a greener business.

While some in IT may be inclined to overlook what's happening in their own backyards, Horvath is not. For starters, she notes that 50 percent of most companies' carbon emissions are electricity related. "And data centers are electricity hogs," she says. (For more, see "Six Ways to a More Efficient Data Center.") Add to that the PCs, copiers, printers and phones, which, Horvath says, drive the lion's share of the electricity demands coming from the employee base. Basically, she reasons, IT has got everything but HVAC, lighting and other building systems under its umbrella.

"So the smarter you get about specifying and determining your standards around energy consumption," Horvath says, "the more progress you can make for the company."

These days, the hype surrounding green initiatives is also an opportunity for IT to step up and aid interested but uninformed executive peers. IT-driven environmental and sustainability initiatives can "be a way for IT leaders and organizations to gain strategic influence by acting as an enabler for improving the environmental footprint of other business operations, beyond the IT infrastructure," notes Christopher Mines, an analyst at Forrester Research, in a May 2008 "More Green Progress In Enterprise IT" report. (For more, see "Can IT Make Your Company Green?")

Deborah Horvath, CIO of Washington Mutual
Debora Horvath, CIO at Washington Mutual, uses green policies to cut costs.

"Because of the universal nature of IT infrastructure—touching every location and almost every employee," he writes, "IT has a unique capability to substitute (low-carbon) infrastructure for (carbon-intensive) processes."

Washington Mutual's Green Successes

Since taking on the chairmanship of the brand-new environmental council in 2007, Horvath and her business counterparts at Washington Mutual, or WaMu, have made significant progress. The Seattle-based consumer and small-business bank with nearly $320 billion in assets has cut its PC-related greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent, saved millions on IT-related electricity costs on its PC fleet, and in one recently completed pilot reduced the legal department's paper consumption by 15 percent.

In the desktop computing space alone, WaMu has seen huge savings. For the environment's sake, Horvath reports that WaMu went from emitting 24.5 metric tons of CO2 down to 8.6 metric tons this year. That decrease in electricity usage is chiefly derived from energy-saving power-management software installed on 44,000 PCs, which powers them down when not in use. (Horvath declines to name the vendor, citing WaMu policy.)

Loading...
 
 
IT Jobs
 
 
 
ABCs
 

Just the basics, please. Sometimes we all need a refresher or we need to make sure our team and our colleagues are all on the same page.

Over 25 tutorials on everything from business intelligence to virtualization.

 
 
FEATURED SPONSORS
 
 
 
SPONSORED LINKS
 

Leveraging Social Computing Technologies for ERP Applications

Best Practices: Safe and Secure Hardware Asset Recovery

Operational Excellence Is Key to Maximizing IT Investments

The Right and Wrong Master Data Management Strategies to Start Small and Grow Big

Paving the Way for Trusted Collaboration

State of the Market: Application Performance Management

Proactively Identify and Resolve Performance Issues

Union Bank of California Improves its Online Banking Services

The Link Between APM and Customer Satisfaction

Providing Around-the-Clock Customer Satisfaction

Deliver Social Computing Business Value

Make Hidden Trends, Inter-Relationships and Influences Visible.

"Enterprise-Proven" is the Prerequisite for Enterprise SaaS Portal Solutions

Corral, configure and control all your mischievous machinery with a Lantronix device server

Spend less. Get hosted UC. Get cash back. It's easy under a Cypress

Predict the future with HP Insight Power Manager

Log onto Hitachi True Stories, films inspired by the next great achievement

Earn PROFESSIONAL DOCTORATE Part-Time, Online at Syracuse University's iSchool

Make IT Work As One@novell.com

Predict the future with HP Insight Power Manager

HP LaserJet P4014n printer starting at $799 after $100 IS. www.hp.com

CIO Starter Kit includes useful resources created by top CIOs. Free Download>>

The Business of Managing Content: Xythos Document Management & Microsoft SharePoint

Server Virtualization Benchmark Results

White Paper: Never Enough Compute Power?

White Paper: Scaling Down HPC for Smaller Organizations

17 Ways to Reduce Cost in IT

Learning from BPM Leaders

Webcast: Mitigate Operational Risk- Real Answers for Tough Times

First-hand look at this never before seen research

Effectively Managing High-Performing, Business-Critical Web Applications

Managing Service Level Agreements to Achieve Business Goals

APM Solutions: A Window into Complex Web Applications

APM Solutions Offer Insight into Complex Web Applications

Five Best Practices for Enterprise Collaboration Success

The ECM Paradox: Extending Local Flexibility to Strengthen Central Control

Customer Insight Yields Sales, Marketing Gains

Live Webcast - Ensuring Business Services Delivery

File Integrity Monitoring: Prove compliance and secure your IT environments

Affordable technology-no compromise. HP server solutions

SOA Educational Library at the TIBCO SOA Resource Center

CIO Viewpoints: Migrating to Exchange 2007

Thrive during global disruption. Cisco video featuring Juan Enriquez

A new level of interoperability. Make IT Work As One@novell.com

Protect data-HP All-in-One and Disk-Based systems

Businesses Transform with VMware Virtualization

Download the free CIO Starter Kit to access useful resources created by top CIOs

Virtualization Benchmark and TCO Analysis-Read Now

Learn to Leverage Maximum Computing Power

Windows Vista: Essential Benefits and Deployment Strategies