Are Solution Providers, VARs and IT Consultants Ready for Environmental Certifications? - How Much Green?
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Dumala cautions, however, that a green IT certification could prove
costly for solution providers. Drawing an analogy with organic food
requirements, she points out that producing chemical-free foods does
cost more.
She questions how much of that other green—the monetary kind—it would
take for the average solution provider to build a business model around
green IT.
Tech Networks' shares Dumala’s skepticism, even though her company has
been working hard to adopt environmentally friendly processes and sell
green technologies. Tech Networks even went as far as having a system,
called Earth-PC Ultra, which was built to stringent environmental
requirements, such as energy-efficient components and reduced use of
hazardous materials.
Her point is that going green requires an investment. In addition,
Labandibar says, when you switch a customer to virtual servers from
physical machines, for instance, you are potentially reducing the
future revenue of maintaining the physical equipment.
That means going green requires strategic thinking. There is money to
be made in virtualization, automation and other ongoing technology
trends, which could make up for revenue losses in other areas. And even
if customers’ IT budgets shrink should the economy continue to
flounder, the motivation on spending now to save later will translate
to money in the pockets of solution providers.
“In the event of a contraction of IT budgets during the next 18 months,
some of the discretionary spending on green IT may disappear,”
according to the Gartner paper by Kumar and Bova. “However, in some
cases, it may actually increase. For example, many organizations will
spend to save; they will buy products or services that result in a
contraction of operational costs such as energy bills.”
Thibodeaux, who promises to make the greening of IT a priority at
CompTIA, views the idea that going green is expensive as a
misconception. “Forward-looking people,” he says, “are looking at it as
a business opportunity."
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