Track

Research-in-Progress

Abstract

This session presentation will provide a framework to examine decisions about sustainable, or “green,” IS solutions withmultiple stakeholders and multiple factors. The framework explicitly integrates the triple bottom line and IS value chainperspectives. This enables a holistic assessment of the factors involved in the decision-making process, accounting fortangibles (e.g. cost savings from energy reduction) and important intangibles (e.g. social responsibility) as well as indirectfactors (e.g. GHG reduction). In particular, a representative case study is presented that examines the specific issue of“greening a data center.” The framework is used to assess the various complex trade-off considerations for strategic optionssuch as “replace existing servers with energy efficient servers” and “consolidate servers utilizing virtualization.” This leads to adecision process that accounts for both traditional business case (i.e. cost-profit analysis) and the sustainability business case.The green data center case study is only one non-trivial example use of the Green IS assessment and decision framework.The Green data center case study details how the framework helped identify the various factors and considerations that aroseand how these are used ultimately to formulate a confident decision on which Green data center strategy to adopt. The paperfurther provides a general analysis of the use, benefits, and limitations of the framework. The green data center case study isused to illustrate how the framework establishes the conditions and boundaries by which one strategy may be chosen overanother, the sensitivities and accuracy needed of the required inputs, and the confidence in the resulting assessments anddecisions.

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