126 apps for managing green and sustainability info

Did you know that there are now more than 65 software developers hawking at least 126 applications for environmental management, energy-efficiency tracking, carbon emissions tracking, sustainability planning and safety/health compliance?

There has been a boom in this software of software in the past two years; this year alone there have been at least 15 product launches.

This stuff is all tracked in a new guide from British research firm, Verdantix, which has just published the "Buyer's Guide to Sustainable Business Software. I can't tell if the firm does a ranking, because I'm not important enough to warrant my own copy -- it costs roughly $460 (or 300 British pounds). But I have written here in GreenTech Pastures about many of the companies covered including 1E Software, CA, ENXSuite EnerNOC, Enviance, First Carbon Solutions, Hara, SAP, Tririga, Verdiem, Verisae, VillageGreen Global and ZeroFootprint. So this very definitely seems to be a good resource for those trying to figure out their options.

There are several themes explored that are worth noting for you as a potential manager of this software:

1. It's been bought by people outside your sphere of influence: 93 percent of the software firms considered in the report are selling to people with titles like vice president of sustainability or chief sustainability officer. Just 18 percent are selling into the IT organization.
2. The dominant deployment model is software as a service (SaaS). This makes sense to me, given the rapid rate of change of for environmental regulations and sustainability compliance concerns.
3. The emergence of the integrated platform. This is probably the most important thing worth noting. The simple fact is that SAP has already acquired two companies in this space, Clear Standards (carbon management) and Technidata (environmental compliance). It seems like it will only be a matter of time before consolidation will rule the day within the sustainability software segment. The report's author, David Metcalfe, predicts: "Only a handful of today's 65 vendors will survive the inevitable consolidation."