Jara Muda* and Desalegn Aweke
Information Technology in a modern arena have been playing a vital role in almost all walks of our today life. Due to the fast development and high level of greenhouse gases emission, the IT industry now a days has started thinking about Green IT strategies by Salient Data centers toward improving their environmental impacts. Green Computing, ICT or IT initiatives are now moving towards cloud or building their business applications on the cloud infrastructure. In addition to cost effectiveness, scalability and promised high uptime; green infrastructure and services have been increasingly adapted over cloud both in developing and under developed countries. Many research studies have investigated and analyzed that cloud computing is not inherently and always providing energy efficient solutions and services. Hence, products and services provided over clouds are also required to be green so as to minimize the adverse impact on environment. This paper analyzes the rational of Green ICT usage in higher educations and finds critical success factors for Green ICT implementation based on survey of selected educational institutes and interviews with academic key experts in the Universities of Ethiopia. Finally, the paper produced a development of Green Cloud Adoption Decision Support Matrix Framework for green ICT in higher educational institutions. The paper also implemented an energy saving technique to reduce energy consumption levels of the cloud data centers where ICT products as services runs in real sense. As an outcome, Green Cloud Adoption Decision Support Matrix Framework that helps the cloud service users to select most feasible Green cloud-based ICT products and services is produced. In order to save environment and its effect on human life this research can be utilized as a great contribution of new knowledge in green ICTs design and deployments in HEIs.