Bell rings alarm over green shortcomings

Bell Micro has added to industry concerns that resellers are failing to meet end user demand for greener IT products after admitting uptake of its Going Green initiative has been lukewarm.

The distributor joined forces with HP in September to launch Going Green, a package designed to help resellers deploy greener IT infrastructures. The duo offered to co-fund the first 10 VARs to come on board, but so far only two have signed up.
Antony Young, director of services and security divisions for Bell, said the distributor had delayed marketing the services until last month. However, he admitted green fatigue among resellers was also a factor.
“We’re still ploughing on with it, but it is taking longer than we anticipated,” he said.
“There is a danger that we as an industry are becoming snow-blind to some of the true green messages coming through. There is some apathy out there, and I think it is as a result of a combination of WEEE
(the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive) having turned everyone off and because everyone is putting a green spin on the same old sales messages.”
However, Tom Kelly, managing director of HP partner Logicalis, hit back at Bell’s claims.
“We were probably the first reseller to reveal our green IT strategy. We did this more than two-and-a-half years ago and were way in advance of anything that HP, Cisco or IBM did,” he said. “The apathy to which you refer certainly does not apply to our actions.”
HP and Bell Go Green in the datacentre