CRN Tech Impact 2022: How to win in burgeoning carbon measurement market

Focusing on the cultural aspect of carbon reduction, as well as partnership, will be key to success, CRN Tech Impact panellists agree

Carbon measurement is becoming an increasingly crowded space, with a long line of IT services and IT solutions provider entering the fray over the last 12-18 months.

But what makes a good carbon measurement or management tool?

That's a question we put to leaders at two channel partners that have developed offerings in this arena.

Both agreed that a good tool in this burgeoning market should cover off the cultural challenge of how to actually reduce emissions once waste has been identified.

"A lot of solutions on the market at the moment focus on data driven outcomes. What we chose to focus on was people and culture, therefore, we built it in Microsoft Teams, so that we can bring people along on that journey," said Natalie Bell, a co-founder of Glasgow-based Microsoft partner Akari Solutions.

"The important bit that a lot of people miss is the cultural bit. Even if we find lots of waste, and can reduce emissions, are they in the right position to actually enact those changes? And so we come up with a whole series of remediation programmes to help them," agreed Mark Butcher, director of sustainable cloud consultancy Posetiv Cloud.

Bell and Butcher also agreed that at this stage no one tool offers a silver bullet, making peer-to-peer partnership desirable.

"I think there's going to be a huge amount of partnering," Butcher said.