How easy is it to sell green?

These days, talking about green IT has become a trend. It all started with
the environmentalists making a hue and cry over the climatic changes, and with
Al Gore getting the Nobel Prize.

Then the said green warriors started targeting IT companies that did not
follow the global norms and environmental protection norms. Slowly as hurricanes
and earthquakes swept the world, the concept of the need for preserving the
environment became all the more important and with it the need for using green
products found its mark.



Just a concept?

For the past one year, the concept of green IT is finding good uptake among
enterprises and data centers, which has percolated to the home segment too,
where the green concept actually begins. It starts from the LCD monitor and goes
till the concept of virtualization, server consolidation.

This concept is simple. Any product or solution that saves power and radiates
less energy is considered as a green product or a green solution and utilizing
these products is what is called green IT.

Today almost every vendor proclaims to have green products, which emits less
radiation. The solution provider (SP) and system integrator (SI) plays a pivotal
role in bringing the green products to their customers that ranges from small,
medium to large.

With so many vendors constantly exploring ways to contribute to the
environment by adding green to products and solutions portfolio, it's quite
interesting to look out the adoption of these products and solutions. Looking at
a micro level on the adoption of green technology, we see that there hasn't been
much of the revolution happening in reality.

Now looking at an SI/SP perspective, there is not much sales happening in the
greener area and SIs are finding it tough to sell a green product.

Cost factor

On an average, green products are considered to be costlier than normal
products. “The green technology is more expensive than the normal technology and
it is one of the constraints in selling it to the customers even though they are
in need of it. For constructing a green building, we need to import products as
they are not available in India,” said Ravi Verdes of Frontier Business Systems.

According to Ajay Sawant of Orient Technologies, the expense factor is
preventing the SMB customers to go for green technology. “The SMB is an emerging
space and lots of business happens in this area. Those companies which needs 30
PCs wouldn't like to invest in the expensive technology like this,” felt Sawant.

However, Delhi-based Balwinder Singh, CEO, Targus Technologies deferred. He
opined that he is able to sell the green products by explaining the RoI factors
to the customers.

“There is no doubt that green technology is expensive. However, post
deployment of technologies like virtualization and server consolidations the RoI
would be there on a larger scale for the companies and I have been selling the
products only by explaining the RoI factor to the customers,” stated Singh.

Lack of awareness

Ranjan Chopra, Chairman and CEO, Team Computers felt that the green concept
hasn't yet reached the level of it being a sales proposition. “The concept is
still in a nascent stage and the term itself needs more consolidation. First we
should be aware of what all fits into the green product criteria. It hasn't yet
reached the sales pitching position. And it will take a while for people to
understand the concept and adopt to the technology,” said Chopra.

Saket Kapur of Delhi-based Green Vision echoes similar sentiments. “There is
a zero percent awareness among the customers on the concept. Even most of the
dealers aren't aware about the importance of green technology. These principals
are just focusing on bringing out the products because their competitors are
launching new green products. But none of them are actually educating the
channels on that and they in turn fail to pass the benefits of green technology
to their customers,” Kapur claimed.

Even Sawant felt that there have been hardly any initiatives taken by the
vendors to educate the partners about the green technology. “Till date none of
the vendors have conducted a seminar on green IT,” quipped Sawant. He also added
that it is easy to talk about green IT but difficult to communicate. “It
requires lots of education programs from the vendor's side and only then the
channels would be able to communicate the positives of green IT to the
customers,” Sawant opined.

Need of the hour

Most SPs agree that green IT is the need of the hour.

SIs and SPs must understand the urgency to adapt to green IT and pass on the
benefits to their customers. Only green technology has the power of giving them
regular business and add value to their existing one, since enterprises would
prefer cutting down their IT spending to the maximum due to recurring costs on
power consumption.



NR SETHURAMAN

(sethuramannr@cybermedia.co.in)