Here is the first of my ten final IT trends – in no particular order.

1.Green IT

What is it?

Green computing is the idea that IT use should address wider social and even ethical concerns, especially the environment. Thus Green IT aims to reduce or remove harmful or hazardous materials, maximize energy efficiency (especially servers and data centers) and promote materials reduction, recycling and reuse. Whether this idea ever extends to persuading people to buy fewer products is an interesting question that might be asked with increasing frequency as resource shortages start to bite. What does look certain is that increasing energy costs will make energy savings in general a priority.

Opportunities:

Cost saving initiatives, end of life recycling schemes and ‘life story’ labeling. Also CIOs driving the energy efficiency and sustainability message throughout organisations with IT becoming a central communications point (this could be done by making CIOs responsible for the corporate energy budget).

Risks:

Growing eco-exhaustion amongst consumers (e.g. the Asus bamboo laptop), CSR-cynicism and higher levels of regulation. Also the fact that this is yet another ‘essential’ item to add to the already over-stuffed CIO to-do list.