Green IT Strategies and Applications Research Paper

Green IT Strategies and Applications - Research Paper Example An audit was carried out taking into consideration various factors of carbon efficiency, waste management, resources distribution and IT advancement. It was found that plenty of room is available for improvement in controlling environmental hazards produced by the super store. Carbon footprints are obvious from the reports. After the audit, a Chief Green Officer has been appointed to take steps in transforming Hyper Star into a Green IT complex. He, along with his team, will carry out initial diagnosis and survey of hyper star in light of reports of audit. They will suggest the changes required for the transformation. After Green IT transformation, Hyper Star will be able to influence its partner super stores working in the state of New Jersey. It is required to use resources in an intelligent manner for overall benefit of the employees of Hyper Star and for enhanced environmental care. The issue is raising the efficiency in the manner to utilize minimum resources, minimum waste and maximum performance and results. The return on investment (ROI) by stake holders is beyond just reducing the environmental impact; its about optimizing the resources for the best efficiency. Preliminary Investigation by Green IT Team The higher authorities and stake holders of Hyper Star demanded the Peer review to be conducted by a Green IT team to analyze their store in the light of environmental compliance. An audit team was established comprising CGO, IT experts, managers of different section of Hyper Star and some members from stores inside Hyper Star. The audit was focused on four factors. Input in the form of economical factors Socio-cultural norms and attitude of employees Business Infrastructure Technical Development Following findings were published in their report. Carbon emissions are large enough to threaten the environment regarding global warming. Hyper star is doing an extensive business in New Jersey and can be quite helpful by creating network with Partner Organiza tions. The waste management is not proper. Plenty of items are being wasted without taking any care of them. The items for sale and complementary products for use by the employees are quite large in number. Considering IT items only, the store contains 200 laptops, 100 desktop machines, 250 Printer machines for tracking records of items purchases by customer, 10 membership card identification modules and 20 tag identification modules for recognizing prices on various items. All these things create significant amount of carbon emissions into the environment i.e. nearly 70 kilo tons of carbon in a month. The equipments used by the staff is aging and contributing more towards carbon emissions, Moreover, the computers which keep record of the items purchased has a huge database that itself is a big burden on environment in terms of carbon footprints. Proper tagging of items is not ensured leading towards use of papers and other small stickers by the staff to tag the prices. As a result, more stuff is produced contributing towards the ultimate waste. Scheduling the billing of each customer is not automated. People have to wait in line for their turn. Also cash counters are not enough to deal with a large number of customers. Reforms are required in this regard. A huge data server is required to be set up that keeps a centralized record of each and every activity in the store. Proper videos will have to be made to minimize the risk of items being