Environment Becomes Priority in Tech Buying Decisions

But while businesses and consumers become more ecologically minded in their tech buying, they have trouble identifying IT vendors they perceive as green, says Schwarz.

Asked to name vendors with green products, more than 40 percent of respondents went blank. When prodded, study participants named Dell, then Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft, Schwarz says.

The response indicates that no clear green technology leader has emerged as of yet, and vendors need to do a better job of articulating their positions.

“I think that is the most interesting result,” Schwarz says. “The great takeaway from this is there is a loss of opportunity for technology companies.”

It isn’t that vendors are necessarily shirking their green responsibilities. Just about every big-name vendor, including Dell, IBM, HP, Intel and AMD, in recent years has invested in reducing the power consumption by their products. Efforts are also underway across the industry to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and use renewable materials.

For instance, this week managed services platform vendor Level Platforms published a white paper encouraging solution providers to use its remote monitoring and management software to make their customers’ IT environments greener.

Not only do managed services providers reduce the emissions and costs associated by cutting travel to customer sites, but they can also use the software to run inventories and reports on old equipment, such as cathode-ray tube monitors and inefficient servers and power supplies, to recommend replacing them with more efficient technology.

Hansa GCR surveyed 300 midsize businesses and 300 enterprise companies for its study on green IT attitudes. Respondents were decision makers for purchases of items such as desktop and laptop computers, servers and networking hardware.

The study found that 58 percent of businesses are making an effort to reduce waste related to printing, though only 14 percent have moved to implement more comprehensive sustainability plans.

Forty-nine percent said their company has set as a priority minimizing their environmental impact and set specific performance goals to achieve that. Fifty-four percent they already are buying greener IT products or services, and 88 that have bought green in the past 18 months say doing so has saved them money on energy.