Is BP an IT "game changer"?
Friday, 18 June 2010 12:21.
Any Brit watching the congressional hearings yesterday on Capitol Hill must have been feeling as sorry for Tony Hayward as we all did last week for Rob Green. Whilst BP have scored a number of PR own goals, the beating he received was definately over the top.
Undoubtedly, the oil spill is a terrible disaster for the U.S. and one that should not be under estimated. It will have long term effects for the ecology of the region and some experts are predicting that the area will never recover.
In addition to the genuine dismay, the rhetoric coming out of the U.S. is however interesting from a slightly different perspective. For the first time, the largest and most powerful nation on earth has woken up to the environmental damage that a major oil spill brings to a region. Barack Obama has referred to the Gulf of Mexico disaster as having "the same impact on the US psyche as 9/11."
This is powerful talk indeed and we all know what happens when "Uncle Sam" wakes up! My view is that we will start to see a profound change in environmental legislation eminating from America. This will be one of the positive things that emerge from this disaster. This will lead to a much more serious approach to alternative energy production whilst looking at more efficient ways of saving energy.
IT has a big part to play here. The CRC regulations brought in by the last government are designed to focus the larger institutions on energy efficency with the "carrot and stick" approach. However, we in the IT business can and should be doing a lot more to conserve our energy supplies. This can be done through more efficent management of the IT estate, but also by encouraging staff to change their behaviour. At Intergence we are currently researching more efficent energy saving solutions and will be implementing these in our new building which we move into next month.
So my view is that the disaster will be a real "game changer" as the U.S. pyche moves away from hydrocarbons to renewables. This will drive new innovation and and behaviour across the globe. Our role in IT should be to have the processes and technology to allow this change to happen in a seamless way, by managing the infrastructure more effectively and providing sustainable energy solutions for the future.
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