As a major international company with a presence in every part of the globe, we are constantly looking for ways to reduce our carbon footprint while enhancing efficiencies and saving investors' money. 

Information Technology (IT) is one key area of this focus.  Over the past year, with the help of the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) "Energy Star" campaign we have been working to reduce carbon output of our staff's personal computers.  This PC power management initiative was featured recently in a Forrester Research podcast covered here.  A few highlights follow below:

I recently recorded a podcast with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the global pharmaceutical company, and their success story of implementing a PC power management initiative that is expected to cut energy costs by ~$1 million per year.

While these savings alone should impress any IT executive - especially IT infrastructure and operations professionals who manage PCs - what I found so unique about their story came through my conversation with Matt Bartow, business analyst in GSK's research and development IT organisation, who led this initiative. In particular, GSK is a great example of how "empowering" staff to innovate can industrialise IT operations leading to significant cost savings and green IT benefits....

To ensure the project was a success, GSK enacted a two week pilot of these new settings on a diverse group of 550 volunteers with different working habits from different countries and lines of business. To refine the power settings, users were surveyed to understand if productivity, application use, or any other working behavior was impacted.

This trial run also helped GSK develop their green IT baseline to assess their financial and environmental savings potential - which turned out to be significant. When implemented across GSK's 92,000 PCs globally, these more aggressive PC power management settings are expected to save close to $1 million in energy costs each year, and a reduction in carbon emissions equivalent to taking 1,012 passenger vehicles off the road.