Insights

September 14, 2012

September 20 Meeting on Managing IT Impacts on Real Estate

On September 20, 2012, SR Inc is pleased to host SBER Member-Client executives throughout the U.S. to discuss SR Inc’s original Executive Guidance on Managing IT Impacts on Real Estate. Executives will gather in Boston, New York, San Jose, Washington DC, Denver and Irvine, for a Cisco TelePresence-enabled webinar, 1-2pm EDT.

IT systems can have a large impact on HVAC and electrical systems design and operation, energy loads (including base and peak loads), total energy consumption, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and space utilization. Managing IT impacts is very important to corporate users, as they are responsible for most the associated infrastructure and operating costs of IT systems. While owners do not have direct responsibility, IT systems massively impact base building systems and hence the performance of RE assets. Leaders therefore identify and share best practices with their tenants for mutual benefit.

In addition to discussion of numerous secondary examples, we will present detailed case studies of Member-Clients SAP (corporate IT governance and management, with Bill Rinsma, Global Facilities Management and Global Lead – Real Estate, Sustainability and Data Centers), Cisco (computer labs, with Ali Ahmed, senior manager Global Energy Management and Sustainability within the Workplace Solutions Group), and NetApp (communication closets, with Ralph Renne, Director Site Operations, Workplace Resources).

Key takeaways from our work include:

• Directors of real estate prioritize managing IT impacts on real estate because IT infrastructure is responsible for 5-10% of energy use in most economies today, and sometimes more than 60% of a company’s energy bill.
• Real estate executives partner with their IT colleagues to focus on server rooms, computer labs, plug loads, and communications closets as major in-building sources of IT impacts.
• More and more leading companies now track a distinct set of IT-specific KPIs to manage IT impacts; large companies tend to measure and manage IT resources more efficiently.
• Assigning responsibility for the cost of IT impacts on operations, specifically energy costs, to IT leaders is essential to driving more sustainable IT
• The share of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions from IT is expected to double between 2012 and 2020.

If you or your company has implemented industry leading best practices in managing IT impacts on real estate operations that you wish to share, please do not hesitate to contact SR Inc. 

SR Inc Research & Consulting Team (research@sustainround.com)