How Green Is My Vendor?

IBM has launched a program to test and validate products from business partners that companies can use to analyze and reduce their use of energy and other resources.

Business partners with hardware and software products and services that receive IBM's green seal of approval under the "Ready for IBM Energy & Environment" initiative can participate in IBM joint marketing events and other activities. IBM also will steer sales leads to approved partners and give them more prominence in IBM third-party product catalogs.

IBM expects to certify some 30 such products and services this year, said Chris Wong, vice president of ISV and developer relations. "It's going to be a fairly exclusive group," he said.

Information technology vendors are eager to jump on the green bandwagon with today's emphasis on being environmentally responsible and the need for businesses to cut costs through efficient use of energy and other resources. The question is how many of those products live up to their marketing claims. "Can they really deliver savings in energy or deliver in terms of helping to improve the environment?" Wong said.

IBM has some 100,000 business partners and, according to the company, the new program is open to any of them that market products and services that work in conjunction with IBM hardware, software and services to help customers reduce their use of resources such as energy, water and paper. Wong couldn't say how many products could eventually be certified or even how many are eligible.

One of the first to be certified is the InfraStruXure solution from Schneider Electric's Critical Power and Cooling Services business unit, also known as APC by Schneider Electric. InfraStruXure Central works with IBM's Tivoli Monitoring software to help data center managers reduce their energy consumption for IT power and cooling.

The Schneider Electric validation was based on data collected from a deployment of the company's product at Bryant University in Smithfield, R.I., part of a broader IBM project at the school called the "scalable modular data center initiative," said Alistair Pim, vice president of global strategic accounts and alliances at APC by Schneider Electric. That effort cut power usage in the school's data center from more than 603,000 kilowatt hours per year to 480,000, Pim said, saving more than $18,000 annually.

Wong said IBM would build online marketing campaigns and other events around the validated solutions and showcase them in its 42 innovation centers worldwide.

Pim said APC by Schneider Electric and IBM have several marketing events planned around the green certification. He said the stamp of approval also gives APC by Schneider Electric an edge over competitors on IBM's solutions Web site. "If you search for energy efficiency, I think this will help bring us up to the top of the list," he said.

Also winning certification is Connectgaia.com, a Web-based energy management system from KLG Systel of India that's built on IBM's SOA architecture, WebSphere Portal and DB2 database software.

Wong said another example of a solution that could be certified is a Lotus-based application for calculating carbon output and carbon credits.

The Ready for IBM Energy & Environment Program has been in development for about six months, according to Wong. Most difficult was developing the criteria for judging the third-party products, which Wong said IBM adopted from its own environment-related practices and best practices developed by customers. The IBM Energy & Environment Review Board and IBM's Corporate Environmental Affairs organization evaluate products submitted for certification.

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