The Corporate Sustainability Dimensions of Service-Oriented Information Technology

There is an increasing appreciation by information technology practitioners and researchers of the emerging discipline of sustainable IT. This is motivated by a growing awareness and concern about IT's impact on the environment. Sustainable IT has been generally defined to encompass strategies that lead to the more efficient use of computing resources while maintaining or increasing overall information system performance. The initial stage of sustainable IT development, often called "Green IT," has focused on reducing energy costs, primarily in data centers. Although green IT solutions have been mostly product-oriented and internal to the IT function, sustainable IT's potential as a service to the organization and to society is much larger. As IT's role and potential impact on corporate sustainability becomes better defined, expectations for specific IT performance outcomes in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) domain will increase. To fully understand the opportunities and responsibilities facing IT departments as they embrace sustainable IT, a better understanding of CSR as it might apply to the development of future IT services is needed. The purpose of this paper is to define the CSR dimensions that impact IT, review the current state of sustainable IT, and review the sustainable IT initiatives of IT companies that are viewed as leaders in CSR as they plan for the future of sustainable IT.