Selling Green IT Means Digging Deeper With Customers

It's not that Ciccarelli is opposed to selling IT products and services that help the environment. Quite the contrary. But the problem, he feels, is in many cases those solutions aren't helping the end user. And there's a way to do both.

Ciccarelli prefers the term "sustainability" to green when it comes to developing solutions that have a lower carbon footprint and can save a company money. He's sold such solutions for the past couple of years and has become a noted expert on the matter, speaking to audiences at events, including Ingram Micro's VentureTech Network conference. He spoke recently with Scott Campbell, Assistant News Editor of Everything Channel, about Green IT. The following are excerpts from the conversation:

Why is green IT good for your customers?

Actually, we think of Green IT as a product-centric component of sustainability. We've found the most value in focusing broadly on the idea of sustainability, within ecological, financial and social contexts. The channel is services-centric, so it's important to take this more holistic approach. The conversations we are having around sustainability are more in alignment with the operational goals of our clients, and are more authentic than pitching "greenwashed" IT products. But the bottom line is the business case; it's a business discussion, not a morals discussion.

Can you define what you mean by sustainability?

"Sustainability is a holistic way for any organization to set goals around the social impact, economic impact and environmental impact of its operations and approaches. I refer to a model called 3BL, triple bottom line. As any organization tries to deliver on a service and be economically viable, you try to maximize your profits. You can design your organization to have an environmental value and a social value, but the economics have to be there first.

We understand economic sustainability as being interconnected with environmental and social impact, as well as, of course, increased revenue and decreased costs. You have to prove the business value and you must know how this relates to every operation, every strategy, every goal of your client.

So what you're saying is to create a true eco-friendly IT solution, it has to be more than products. How does virtualization fit into the picture?

For IT, sustainability is about connecting all the dots for technology and strategy to interact. This might include virtual desktops, mobility and unified communications, virtualization, along with other products and solutions. The key is making sure that the solution fits the needs of the client, is sustainable from a cost standpoint and also makes an environmental impact. What advice would you have for a solution provider looking to bring sustainability to their customers?

First, if you don't believe in this stuff yourself, you need to stay away. If you don't care about climate change, about energy problems, you need to be careful how you approach green IT. If it's not authentic, that's going to stand out.

You need to have a values discussion within your own organization. If you have a sales force that doesn't value sustainability and the consultative approach it mandates, they're not going to pitch it, or they're not going to pitch it genuinely and successfully.

What has Varsity Technologies done to instill those values in your employees?

About nine months ago, we had 24 servers running in our lab. We're not that big a company, 19 people. We reduced that to two virtual servers, one virtual lab server. That was a no-brainer for us. We also used more documents and tools with remote access capability. We deployed virtual desktops. When people work from home, they work from terminal devices. Also, by working remotely, people don't have to drive to work. We have created a teleworker process, to allow employees to have freedom of location. We tell employees, it's OK to work remotely, and here's our clear policy on how to do that. That's changing the dynamics of your company.

We were on hosted VoIP. We brought unified communications in internally. In the next six months, we're moving all of our infrastructure into a data center. What we hear back from the staff is they almost never are without Internet access. There's never an excuse not to have access.

We can move to SharePoint, Groove Networks, peer-to-peer document sharing and terminal services for good access to the rest of our applications to ConnectWise and so forth. In San Francisco, we have a thing called City Car Share, like Zipcar. This is a big deal for your staff to go visit clients. Just by signing up, we greatly reduced our carbon usage. One guy has an SUV, he was consuming a lot of gas to visit clients. We don't want to pay it, and [employees] don't want the miles on [their] cars. And one added thing that we didn't even think about is now our people say they can change their insurance policy because they don't use their car for work.

Any other advice for solution providers who want to bring more environmentally friendly solutions to their customers?

The best thing to do is look internally in your own organization first, and begin to ask some questions. Do you sell any products that help the environment, Energy STAR or other? What do you offer employees to make their lives better in terms of health care, educational opportunities, teleworking? How can technology increase your efficiency and, therefore, bring your costs down? When you decide upon vendors, do you look past potential savings on supplies to the practices of those suppliers? Do you find ways to give back to your customers and the communities that they live within? Do you pay attention to feedback from the stakeholders of your organization, from employees to vendors to owners to investors to the community around you, and consider their feedback carefully, and respond as positively as you can?

Look internally. Ask the economic questions first. And you have to engage . This is not top down, or bottom up.