These days, talking about green IT has become a trend. It all started with the environmentalists making a hue and cry over the climatic changes, and with Al Gore getting the Nobel Prize.

Then the said green warriors started targeting IT companies that did not follow the global norms and environmental protection norms. Slowly as hurricanes and earthquakes swept the world, the concept of the need for preserving the environment became all the more important and with it the need for using green products found its mark.

Just a selling concept?
For the past one year, the concept of green IT is finding good uptake among enterprises and data centers, which has percolated to the home segment too, where the green concept actually begins. It starts from the LCD monitor and goes till the concept of virtualization, server consolidation.

This concept is simple. Any product or solution that saves power and radiates less energy is considered as a green product or a green solution and utilizing these products is what is called green IT.

Today almost every vendor proclaims to have green products, which emits less radiation. The solution provider (SP) and system integrator (SI) plays a pivotal role in bringing the green products to their customers that ranges from small, medium to large.

The adoption of green IT alone can bring a salvation to the rising costs in an organization

With so many vendors constantly exploring ways to contribute to the environment by adding green to products and solutions portfolio, it's quite interesting to look out the adoption of these products and solutions. Looking at a micro level on the adoption of green technology, we see that there hasn't been much of the revolution happening in reality.

Now looking at an SI/SP perspective, there is not much sales happening in the greener area and SIs are finding it tough to sell a green product.

Cost factor
On an average, green products are considered to be costlier than normal products. “The green technology is more expensive than the normal technology and it is one of the constraints in selling it to the customers even though they are in need of it. For constructing a green building, we need to import products as they are not available in India,” said Ravi Verdes of Frontier Business Systems.

According to Ajay Sawant of Orient Technologies, the expense factor is preventing the SMB customers to go for green technology. “The SMB is an emerging space and lots of business happens in this area. Those companies which needs 30 PCs wouldn't like to invest in the expensive technology like this,” felt Sawant.

However, Delhi-based Balwinder Singh, CEO, Targus Technologies deferred. He opined that he is able to sell the green products by explaining the RoI factors to the customers.

“There is no doubt that green technology is expensive. However, post deployment of technologies like virtualization and server consolidations the RoI would be there on a larger scale for the companies and I have been selling the products only by explaining the RoI factor to the customers,” stated Singh.

He also added that most of the IT companies are opting for green technology to cut their costs and achieve their bottomlines. But why does this technology, which can make a great difference remains ignored only due to the cost factor.

Lack of awareness
Ranjan Chopra, Chairman and CEO, Team Computers felt that the green concept hasn't yet reached the level of it being a sales proposition. “The concept is still in a nascent stage and the term itself needs more consolidation. First we should be aware of what all fits into the green product criteria. It hasn't yet reached the sales pitching position. And it will take a while for people to understand the concept and adopt to the technology,” said Chopra.

Saket Kapur of Delhi-based Green Vision echoes similar sentiments. “There is a zero percent awareness among the customers on the concept. Even most of the dealers aren't aware about the importance of green technology. These principals are just focusing on bringing out the products because their competitors are launching new green products. But none of them are actually educating the channels on that and they in turn fail to pass the benefits of green technology to their customers,” Kapur claimed.

Even Sawant felt that there have been hardly any initiatives taken by the vendors to educate the partners about the green technology. “Till date none of the vendors have conducted a seminar on green IT,” quipped Sawant. He also added that it is easy to talk about green IT but difficult to communicate. “It requires lots of education programs from the vendor's side and only then the channels would be able to communicate the positives of green IT to the customers,” Sawant opined.

We can easily deduce from this that none of the SPs or SIs find green IT a futile concept and are only bothered about it's cost.

Need of the hour
Most SPs agree that green IT is the need of the hour. Singh believed that the adoption of green IT alone can bring a salvation to the rising costs in an organization.

“An organization could achieve scalability, reliability at a low maintenance cost only by deploying the green technology. It may be costlier to deploy the technology, but in the long run, every organization would definitely reap the benefits of its deployment,” Singh claimed.

According to Kapur, the government, vendor and the channel must take joint calls to bring the awareness of green IT among the public. Chopra felt that the thought should come from the individual to take up the green IT. “Everyone should be socially conscious and only then we can expect this green IT to get a greater adoption,” he said Mumbai-based Emerson Network Technologies is taking greater efforts to create the awareness of green IT. It has recently conducted symposiums on green IT and has also come out with a concept called 'Energy Logic', which gives solutions for data centers to save energy and become greener.

“We are taking lots of efforts to create the awareness among the partners. We have just started our awareness programs and we are confident in articulating the thoughts towards our partners and customers. More than seeing this as a selling point, everyone should believe on the impact of green IT on our ecosystem,” said Ankesh Kumar, Head-Marketing and Communications, Emerson Networks.

Emerson, along with major vendors like IBM, Cisco, Sun, Dell, VMware, is a part of 'Global Partnership Program' and are working towards the reach of the green IT concept. “Our alliance is taking every step towards making our ecosystem an apt place to live. We are also urging CII and energy efficiency bureau and government to bring the awareness among the public on the green concept and this should happen on a regular basis,” Kumar opined.

SIs and SPs must understand the urgency to adapt to green IT and pass on the benefits to their customers. Only green technology has the power of giving them regular business and add value to their existing one, since enterprises would prefer cutting down their IT spending to the maximum due to recurring costs on power consumption.

NR SETHURAMAN
sethuramannr@cybermedia.co.in

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