Investing in better analytics can help you turn environmental compliance costs into sustainability benefits

Technology vendors and data center suppliers were also invited to participate in Computerworld's search for the Top Green-IT Organizations. These companies completed the same survey as the end user organizations and were judged on the same criteria -- most notably, on their IT departments' efforts to reduce energy consumption in their IT equipment, and to use technology to conserve energy and lower carbon emissions. Here are the top 12, in ranked order:

The IT shop at JM Family Enterprises has taken the typical steps to make its data centers eco-friendly: It has consolidated systems, virtualized servers and set up hot and cold aisles to drive down energy consumption.

A tag-team effort by Kaiser Permanente's data center IT and facilities groups delivered a one-two punch to energy consumption in the company's three data centers this year, cutting an eye-popping 7.2 million kilowatt-hours of power from overall data center operations -- and over $770,000 from power budgets. "We are one of the few companies that have the data center facilities team as part of IT," says Steve Press, executive director of data center facilities services, who credits collaboration for the results.