ICON IT Giants Series - An evening with Trudy Norris-Grey, President UK & Ireland Sun Microsystems 19 April 2007
The Sun is rising again
This event was the sixth in ICON’s IT Giants Series, a programme of events to meet leaders from the IT industry in the UK.
At Intellect's offices in London, Trudy Norris-Grey, the UK and Ireland President and Managing Director (UK and Ireland) of Sun Microsystems, was in the chair with questions from Cliff Saran of Computer Weekly.
The focus of the evening's discussion was centred on the steps that the IT industry is taking to combat climate change and whether these actions will impact growth. Trudy was well qualified to talk on the subject, as she has just joined the CBI's Climate Change Taskforce and is a member of the Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change which has been lobbying Number 10 to use environmental regulation to force companies to produce greener technologies.
Trudy highlighted that if we are to combat climate change then technology will need to be one of the main driving forces in a world of ever increasing population and rising per capita consumption. It is the sort of challenge that the technology industry thrives on. She gave the example of the latest Sun servers which use 66% less power than their predecessors. Given that in parts of the world the energy costs are greater than the cost of the hardware, that is a considerable saving as well as having the environmental impact.
She said there is a huge opportunity for the UK to lead the global efforts and set new standards on climate change but to do it we will need to see strong direction from the very top of government. The other potential hurdle is a “looming skills crisis” that is coming and can already be witnessed by much higher IT salaries in UK than in Continental Europe. There needs to be greater investment. However, as ICON’s CEO Alan Bristow pointed out, investment will only come if the economic returns are visible and there is a strong business case.
"80% of the power consumed in the life of a computer is used before it is turned on for the first time" stated one member of the audience, highlighting the key is to affect change at the manufacturing level. Clearly, it is an issue that Sun has had some success already with its CoolThread technology, which is making servers that are faster cooler and less power hungry.
It is a challenge that the software industry are also having some success with, the increasing importance of ASP model and big savings as a result of virtualisation.
There is however plenty of work to do as the temperature outside exceeds 20 degrees in mid April! What ever happened to April showers?
The seventh in the series of ICON’s IT Giants Series will be with Andrew Gilbert, MD of QUALCOMM Europe on the 06 June 2007.
For further information contact: Rebecca Straker T 020 7331 2037 E This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
