Asia's green IT services to hit US$2B in 2011
update Green IT services in the Asia-Pacific excluding Japan region will grow to a US$2 billion opportunity by 2011, a new report from Springboard Research has indicated.
Released Monday, the Asia-Pacific Green IT Services Market--The Budding Greens report predicted that the region's green IT services market will enjoy a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 68.5 percent between 2007 and 2011. In 2007, the market was worth US$251 million, the boutique research analyst noted.
According to Springboard, the growth in demand for green IT services in the region is led by Australia, India and China. The two Asian economies are the fastest growing in terms of CAGR, while Australia remains the largest market in terms of opportunity.
Virtualization, data center management, recycling and enterprise-wide green IT strategies are the top areas of interest in environmentally-friendly IT, the report added.
Consulting services are much sought after in the region's green IT services landscape and will serve as "an essential market entry point" for vendors, Phil Hassey, vice president of services at Springboard Research, noted in a company statement. By 2011, green IT consulting will grow to US$546 million, he said.
Infrastructure services, however, forms the biggest component of the green IT services market, accounting for 58 percent of the total market in 2007.
Green IT services only started to gain traction in 2008, Hassey told ZDNet Asia in an e-mail Tuesday. "In general, hardware and software benefits have been articulated better than the services angle," he pointed out.
In the light of the current economic climate, the bottomline for enterprises would be that green IT investments "have to allow for quantifiable cost savings", Hassey said, adding that factors which could drive or inhibit uptake of green IT services, exist in the "still volatile" market.
The report also highlighted the vendors that have progressed in catering to market needs. These include Hewlett-Packard-EDS, IBM, Sun, Dell, VMware and Microsoft. To further drive green IT, vendors need to work together with governments to develop "realistic" regulation around green IT, as well as take advantage of what IT can offer as a broad tool to reduce enterprises' environmental footprint, said Hassey.
"Vendors should ensure that their green IT solutions are more than 'window dressing' of existing solutions--for a premium," he noted in the statement. "Green IT adoption will not go into the mainstream until the vendors showcase clear cost savings and a transformational outcome to the enterprise users."