India's Green IT & Sustainability Spend To Touch $70B By 2015: Gartner

India's information technology expenditure on green initiatives will double from $35 billion in 2010 to $70 billion in 2015, according to research firm Gartner.

"India's information and communication technology (ICT) industry will be an early adopter of green IT and sustainability solutions as India is one of the fastest-growing markets in terms of IT hardware and communications infrastructure consumption," said Ganesh Ramamoorthy, research director at Gartner.

Penetration of ICT infrastructure has been growing rapidly during the past decade, as has the energy consumption and resulting carbon emissions of India's ICT infrastructure, Ramamoorthy further added. The research also noted that, apart from ICT companies, banking and financial services, hospitality, manufacturing (such as automobiles), pharmaceuticals, and other industries that have significant exposure to the export markets, will also join the green IT and sustainability trend early in India.

However, in other sectors addressing energy, carbon, resource efficiency and sustainable economic development is currently still in the early stages, it said.

"While awareness of green IT and sustainability issues is very low in Indian organisations, the increasing global focus on energy efficiency, energy security, green IT and sustainability issues is now causing the executive leadership in the technology sector to track, report and manage sustainable and resource-efficient business practices," Ramamoorthy said.

The operational cost of making energy-efficient resources available is pressuring CIOs in Indian companies to develop strategies to optimize ICT utilisation — including companywide energy management — while not compromising on the growth or deployment of newer technologies, he added.