Green IT channel importance on the rise

Ripe revenues are available for the picking to the canny IT provider, says Ashley Leonard

If you follow the energy efficiency agenda, you'll know that at the end of 2013 industry lobby group CompTIA retired its Green IT certification. This could be taken as a bad sign for the market, but as an industry stalwart I thought the action premature.

Maybe I'm biased. There's no doubt green IT has been right through the hype cycle. Like many "buzz" technologies – think big data and cloud right now – a shakedown at some point is inevitable. But what we're left with is a much more mature marketplace.

In 2014 already, we added three new resellers of our PC power management technology, in the UK, Czech Republic and Ghana. We've also put feet on the ground in Australia, so I know that considerable sales opportunities still exist.

Now is not the time to shy away from green IT but to recognise that we now have educated prospects and customers with a clearer idea of what they need and the challenges they face. Speak the right language to the right people and offer the right product or service, and green IT is a rich hunting ground.

Stop thinking carbon reduction first and foremost, however. Carbon emission reduction is hardly ever the primary driver for green IT; it's about cost savings. PC power management, for example, can cut an electricity bill by £60 per PC per year or £60,000 per year for a 1,000-computer organisation.

Also, understanding the energy crunch is vital. Around the world, electricity costs are rising and businesses feeling the pinch.

A March 2013 report by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change suggested that businesses that are medium-sized users of energy currently face costs on average 21 per cent higher, as a result of UK government energy and climate change policies.

Costs for businesses are expected to rise further.

So understand who is doing the buying and help the customer do the sums. With green IT, despite investment from the IT department, it is actually the facilities team that accrues the cost savings.

That's a tough sell, and the facilities team therefore needs to be put right up front in the sales process. Individual departments are charged for energy consumption, but also rewarded by receiving cash back for getting involved in green initiatives. Cost-saving green IT initiatives may thus take on new importance.

And don't forget to think about cloud. On-site deployments can be complicated to manage and may increase the customer's energy consumption. Cloud computing can help customers shift this burden elsewhere.

For example, why buy an energy-hungry supercomputer when you can "rent" time on someone else's? Similarly, PC power management software can be hosted on-site or deployed in the cloud.

Pick the right markets at the right time in the right countries. At the moment, the opportunity to make money from green IT is greatest in those countries and industries where cost savings are most to the fore.

We're seeing the greatest opportunities for our reseller partners in the UK through the government's austerity programme, as well as in Brazil, Australia and Eastern Europe where businesses are facing huge electricity price rises.

With every technological trend there is a point where the market is overheated and too many greedy players are looking to cash in. But the green IT market is no longer "green" per se – it is mature, and reaping rewards for trusted resellers ready to meet customer cost-saving requirements.

Ashley Leonard is chief executive of Verismic