Go Green or Save Green?

There was plenty of green talk from vendors and government officials at last week's United Nations conference on information and communications technology and climate change, although it is clear that users want to start seeing some solid ROI on eco-friendly technologies.

Apparently, not all IT managers and CIOs have the same mindset as Al Gore, something which vendors should keep at the forefront of their marketing efforts. "Customers won't pay more for a green product," said Patricia Calkins, vice president of environmental issues at copier and printer giant Xerox, during a keynote presentation. "We shouldn't think 'gee, can I get more [money] for this?'"

The Xerox exec admitted that, while there are some 'green' technology geeks out there willing to pay top dollar for environmentally friendly technology, most users are still looking to get a bang for their buck.

Whereas younger users might be more easily swayed by the "social" benefits of green technology, this is not necessarily the case for their older co-workers, according to Erik Riedel, a director at Seagate's Research division. "The younger folks tend to think of the social benefits more quickly," he told Byte and Switch, explaining that economic benefits tend to drive discussions with the old guard.

With users under immense pressure to harness their spiraling energy costs, vendors have rushed to jump on the green bandwagon during recent months. A perfect example of this is IBM, which announced plans to throw $1 billion into green initiatives earlier this year, using the same press conference to talk up their blade and virtualization products.Sure, blade servers and virtualization software can held reduce server footprint and, therefore, energy costs, but these technologies will also put a considerable dent into your IT budget. The same goes for all the other green offerings that are currently being touted, such as Massive Array of Idle Disks (MAID), thin provisioning, and energy-efficient hard drives.

Altruism is clearly not the dominant impulse in most data centers, according to Charles Curran, general partner of venture firm Valhalla Partners. "We have been talking to some of the biggest banks and media companies in New York and the U.K., and one of them said that he would run 'the brownest data center on earth' to save a dollar." he said.

The exec, speaking to Byte and Switch last Friday, explained that green issues only go so far when it comes to the bottom line. "We asked banks and media companies, 'If it would cost you $100,000 to reduce your carbon footprint, would you do it?' They said no."

Vendors need to take this into consideration when they are pushing eco-friendly storage solutions, according to Curran. "If you're selling solutions in that area, whether it's hardware, software, or services, you have got to sell something with a hard dollar ROI."

Green is clearly good, but saving green is even better.Have a comment on this story? Please click "Discuss" below. If you'd like to contact Byte and Switch's editors directly, send us a message.