The need to go green, be carbon neutral, and/or promote energy efficiency has been on the lips of virtually every company in America over the past nine months, but lip service and action are two very different things. New survey data suggests that corporate attitudes and implementation strategies are lagging significantly behind the barrage of eco-friendly press releases we've seen over the last year.

CDW's ITMonitor surveyed IT decision makers over the last year and recently reported the results (PDF). While an overwhelming 80 percent majority of companies ranked Green IT as either "Very Important" or "Somewhat Important," the same group listed a number of factors and concerns that could slow the adoption of this technology. CDW VP Mark Gambill, however, sees this type of slow adoption curve as normal.

"Even though IT decision makers clearly recognize the importance of Green IT solutions, such as virtualization and server consolidation, there are always going to be growing pains involved with making a significant change to an organization," said Gambill. "If going green means replacing servers that are already delivering reliable IT to an organization, then widespread adoption may take some time."

At this point, Green IT concerns are being driven from the top of the business segment, rather than the bottom. 43 percent of small businesses (1-99 employees) have no plans to implement Green IT within the next two years, compared to 27 percent of mid-size businesses (100-999 employees), and just 11 percent of large businesses (1000+ employees). The same trend appears within government structures, though the gap is not as severe. 47 percent of local governments have no plan to adopt green technology within the next two years, compared to 34 percent of state governments and 31 percent of the offices in the federal government. The good news here is that a majority of all the organizations polled are moving in more eco-friendly directions, but a significant number of businesses and government agencies of all sizes have yet to shift on the topic.

IT decision makers listed a number of significant concerns when asked to consider the difficulty of moving to energy-efficient systems. Cost was the chief concern at all corporation and government levels and was cited by 47-63 percent of the IT workers polled. Disruption to current IT systems, maintenance complexity, perceived maintenance difficulties, and a lack of expertise were all cited as significant barriers by both business and government staff. A lack of IT initiatives that truly have a positive impact on the environment was also cited.

Asked to name the benefits of Green IT, the majority of business (61 percent) and government (67 percent) workers listed a positive impact on the environment as the largest potential gain, followed by a positive reputation for the company, cost savings, greater operational efficiency, and easier maintenance. Only 13 percent of companies and 7 percent of government structures responded that there was no benefit whatsoever in adopting eco-friendly IT policies, although there was one significant corporate outlier. A whopping 30 percent of small businesses stated their belief that there was no benefit to increased energy efficiency, compared to just seven percent of medium and five percent of large companies.

Armed with these results, I trotted over to Dell and HP to see what emphasis these two players put on power efficiency.

Dell : Dell is going after the green market fairly aggressively. Dell.com has direct links to stories on the company's

eco-initiatives, and the company's new Studio Hybrid is directly marketed as a green PC. Virtually all of the company's "green" efforts

appear to be focused on either the consumer or the enterprise/large business market. The default page for the "Large Business" segment

mentions Dell's PowerEdge Energy Smart servers in one thumbnail ad, advertises the PowerEdge M 1000E as a more energy efficient solution

than comparable products from HP, and lists an entire set of products under the "Energy Optimized" heading on the left-hand side

of the page. The "Small/Medium Business" server page, however, lists none of these by default.

: Dell is going after the green market fairly aggressively. Dell.com has direct links to stories on the company's eco-initiatives, and the company's new Studio Hybrid is directly marketed as a green PC. Virtually all of the company's "green" efforts appear to be focused on either the consumer or the enterprise/large business market. The default page for the "Large Business" segment mentions Dell's PowerEdge Energy Smart servers in one thumbnail ad, advertises the PowerEdge M 1000E as a more energy efficient solution than comparable products from HP, and lists an entire set of products under the "Energy Optimized" heading on the left-hand side of the page. The "Small/Medium Business" server page, however, lists none of these by default. HP: HP does talk power efficiency, but not half so aggressively as its principle rival. Click on "Large Enterprise Business," and the subsequent page rotates a large banner ad, one

segment of which invites you to peruse the five ways "management tools root out inefficiencies." #1 on that list is "Curb Power Use," but

at this point we're two clicks into HP's site and you've clicked on a banner ad. This isn't what I'd call prominent advertising,

but it describes HP's strategy in a nutshell. Yes, power efficiency information and power-efficient systems are available, but the

concept of Green IT gets no special mention here.

Dell seems to have its finger a bit more firmly on the button when it comes to energy efficiency and how much emphasis companies are currently willing to place on it. There's a broad understanding that Green IT is a Very Good Thing, but the challenges that IT administrators list are very real concerns. On the other hand, it's fair, I think, to note that any overhaul of IT infrastructure risks disruption, unseen costs, negative impact on productivity, and may require additional expertise that's not immediately available.

The best way to promote the use of energy efficient products in both the datacenter and on the floor is to make these practices both transparent and seamless. I discussed the difficulty of adopting energy efficiency at the desktop level last week, but many of the concerns apply equally to corporate computers. Learning to identify, manage, and maximize corporate energy efficiency without disrupting worker productivity is a profound challenge, but it's the only way to convince companies with an eye on the bottom line that going green makes good business sense.