When it comes to selling environmentally friendly, or "green," technology, many solution providers still don't believe it to be a sustainable endeavor to take to customers. At least not yet.
At its Varnex Fall Conference this week in Indians Wells, Calif., a Synnex poll found that 42 percent of solution providers say green IT is building traction in the market.
But 33 percent deemed it a hard sell, requiring significant justification of cost savings, and another 12 percent said it will only be a niche play in the foreseeable future. An additional 13 percent think it will be worthwhile once the economy picks up.
During a roundtable session at the conference, several vendor executives said they were surprised by the poll results.
"Two weeks ago, I was in a group of CEOs and CIOs, companies up to 700 employees, and their number one hot button was the greening of the industry," said Gary Koopman, vice president of distribution sales at Hewlett-Packard.
Koopman noted that the end users were particularly interested in soon-to-be-announced desktops that can cut energy costs in half.
"These guys were amazed. They said they would upgrade PCs over two years old immediately to save on energy costs," Koopman said. "They've had to cut back so drastically on staff, they said this would allow them to keep staff. I was not a believer that green was that big a deal, but now I think it's huge."
So why do nearly half of the Varnex solution providers polled believe it's a hard sell or a niche play? The answer could lie in how VARs are marketing the technology. If customers only hear about helping the environment, and not potential cost savings, they may be more likely to pass on green IT, said Benny Madrid, director of market development at Microsoft.
"What is the business justification for it? If companies are going to make investments, green is important, but the onus is on us to show the business value and cost savings in addition to being friendly to the environment," Madrid said.
Indeed, some solution providers said selling green IT is easier if you take out the green, and any perceived political affiliations around it, and focus more on energy cost savings that can be realized with new technology. For example, Whalley Computer Associates, a Southwick, Mass.-based solution provider, recently ran two series of seminars with similar content but different titles. The seminars headlined with a "saving jobs and money" theme were standing room only, while sessions that pushed a "sustainability" theme were attended by zero, two and six people respectively, said Paul Whalley, vice president of the solution provider.
"Reducing costs is the message," Whalley said.
Lester Keizer, CEO of Ron Cook's Connecting Point of Las Vegas, noted that an early-morning session on Green IT at the Varnex conference attracted only two people. "It has to be about a lifestyle change and not be politically correct," Keizer said.
Solution providers intent on leading with an environmental message should choose their target customers wisely, said Stephen DiFranco, vice president of channels at Lenovo.
"First, go to whatever small businesses are driving Priuses. Check the parking lot," DiFranco said. "Small businesses are almost entirely privately owned by entrepreneurs with belief systems and they take their belief system into their business. What I don't think we understand is how important green is personally to to the person spending the money."
At the end of the day, vendors are going to continue to develop more environmentally-friendly products anyway, DiFranco added. At some point, customers will begin to realize there is true cost savings to upgrading or refreshing their existing hardware.
"Desktop computers will dramatically change the power footprint in the next five years. There are big changes coming in LCD technology, with LED. The industry is going to make it happen."
