Turning green

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Around 10% to 15% of our customers’ budgets are allocated to adopting green solutions. - Herbert Radlinger, head of datacentre services at eHosting DataFort (eHDF).

Sathya Mithra Ashok looks behind all the excitement of eco-friendly technology and finds that the Middle East has still some time to go to take on a distinct hue of jade.

Green fever has gripped the entire Middle East region and enterprise customers are falling over themselves to implement the latest in eco-friendly solutions, either due to an increased environmental awareness or due to the growing weight of international regulations.

This is what most vendors in the market who trade in any kind of green solutions would like us to believe. In a bid to increase adoption of environmentally-friendly solutions, these companies have created a veneer of hype that projects the impression of a majority of firms already using these systems. But what exactly lies behind this build-up?

To answer that question, a selection of vendors were asked to give an estimate of the percentage of their customers who have adopted green solutions.

"We are committed to compliance with local laws and regulations in jurisdictions where we operate, and to directives for the recycle, reuse, or reclamation of our products and their packaging. This commitment continues to be a driving force for us. As a result of our efforts, more than 15% of our customers have adopted our green solutions," says Ahmed Zeidan, channel sales manager of Netgear Middle East.

"As consultants and a system integrator, we have been offering green solutions for managing datacentres to more than 70% to 80% of our customers in the Gulf region," says Herbert Radlinger, head of datacentre services at eHosting DataFort (eHDF).

While there is a huge discrepancy in the percentages mentioned by the vendors above, we can agree that a safe number lies between them and is probably below 40%. While many other vendors remained vague on the percentage of customers who had adopted their green solutions, most of them also felt unsure about the budget amounts that enterprises are spending on environment-friendly solutions.

"Around 10% to 15% of our customers' budgets are allocated to adopting green solutions," explains Radlinger.

"We are witnessing a tremendous interest among regional organisations. As a matter of fact, we estimate that up to 10% to 20% of their annual budgets are used to integrate ‘green' products within their operations," says Zeidan.

"Although being concerned about the environment, a recent IDC study showed that most customers are interested in green IT solutions to reduce their operational cost. They are not spending more of their budgets on green solutions, instead they are using these solutions to reduce their OPEX," points out Aziz Ala'ali, regional director, Middle East and Africa, Extreme Networks.

Taken together, a 35% adoption level among enterprises with 20% of annual budgets is a noticeable trend, if not as significant a one as made out by most vendors. Then the questions arise, what solutions are these enterprises actually buying, and is green as penetrating an ideology within their organisations as it should be?

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