In a bid to cut costs in the current economic climate, more small businesses in IT are turning to greener initiatives, whether their decision is taken out of necessity or choice, it has been claimed.

V3 reported the results of a major new paper from Datamonitor, entitled Can Green IT Bloom in an Economic Downturn?, which found that as well as more basic electricity-saving schemes, many firms are turning to virtualised environments and better datacentre designs, perhaps for their disaster recovery systems.

General manager of consultancy firm Morse Mark Nutt told V3 that organisations are not powered by the ethical issues surrounding green IT, instead being driven solely by money savings.

He continued: "There are not many positives in the current economic doom and gloom, but one certainly is that people are undertaking many of those projects previously badged as green in order to reduce costs."

The UK has played host to the Green IT Conference and Exhibition for the last two years, which aims to highlight a range of methods which businesses can adopt to save more money.

A recent survey for Connect found that one in ten companies has lost important data as a result of a backup failure. The company has now developed a unique online backup service for SMEs to ensure they can survive any disaster.