GreenPages Goes On A Virtualization Tear

Calling virtualization the biggest paradigm shift in the industry since the advent of the Internet, GreenPages CEO Ron Dupler outlined the company's aggressive virtualization investment in a keynote address that drove home the "Optimize Your Business. Be Virtual. Lead Green" theme of the company's 12th annual Solutions Summit at The Sheraton Portsmouth in Portsmouth, N.H.

"We are well beyond virtualization being a fad or a new craze," exclaimed Dupler. "It is now! It is real. It is important." Companies that don't embrace virtualization in each part of their business from desktop to servers to storage are putting their business at risk, Dupler said. "This is not an option," he said. "You need to respond to what is happening in the overall marketplace. You are at a competitive disadvantage if your competitors have a more flexible and resilient virtual environment."

Since early this year when it acquired the sales and marketing talent from Foedus, one of the top VMware consulting partners whose engineers were snatched up by VMware itself, GreenPages has been on a virtualization tear.

Dupler said that GreenPages achieved VMware Premier status, one of only 50 in the country, in the second quarter and is now also a member of VMware's prestigious Technical Advisory Board, one of only 15 board members, and a VMware Gold Consulting Partner.

GreenPages also now has 12 VMware Certified Professionals on its staff and 66 VMware Certified Sales Professionals. GreenPages has access to 75 additional Certified VMware Professionals through its GreenPages solutions network.

GreenPages itself is taking advantage of VMware virtualization software to improve its own business. Dupler said GreenPages has reduced the number of servers it was running from 60 to four with virtualization. "For cost and profitability it is insane to be running all these servers when you can virtualize," he said.

Some companies are driving server consolidation rates of 10 to 1 by employing virtualization solutions, Dupler said.

According to Green Pages' Web site, although most people believe that green IT makes sense both in a business sense and environmentally, defining meaningful metrics and models is challenging. Toward that effort, the Environmental Protection Agency plans to introduce its first Energy Star rating for servers by the end of this year. The difficulty has been in determining what is "useful" server work and then measuring that against power consumption standards, according to the Web site.

The virtualization and green themes are also striking a chord with GreenPages' customers. With rising energy costs taking center stage, virtualization IT solution sales are on the rise, Dupler said. This came after a flat first quarter, he said, before the full impact of the gas and energy crises hit home.

Dupler said that he expects GreenPages to once again post double-digit sales growth this year as a result of its virtualization solutions push.

Along with the virtualization push, GreenPages is continuing its no-holds-barred focus on solutions and vertical specialities made up of health care, state and local government and financial services. Dupler said that some 45 percent of the company's business is now from vertical specialization and more than 50 percent of the company's sales are now solutions-based.

GreenPages' Solutions Summit this year featured 92 customers, up 24 percent from last year's summit attendance. Furthermore, 33 percent of the Summit participants were first-time attendees.

Steven Burke (sburke@everythingchannel.com) is Editor/News of Everything Channel. Senior Vice President/Editorial Director Robert C. DeMarzo's column will return with the next issue.