Survey: Still no clear mind-share leader when it comes to green IT

The team at Hansa|GCR will be happy to know that I FINALLY am blogging about their Green TECHpulse 2008 survey, which set out to assess current and future green tech buying intentions, capturing the opinions of business technology decision makers at 600 organizations that were at least midsize in stature (more than 100 employees).

There are a ton of really illuminating stats in this report but two things really stuck out for me in the presentation, given my long background in covering tech companies.

Here's the first one: When asked to cite the company that they believed was synonymous with green IT (an unaided question), the survey respondents' most frequent response was "None." I scoured the list of specific mentions underneath that answer, and none received more than 18 percent. When they were asked to describe their knowledge about specific organizations or green industry efforts, 13 percent of the respondents said they knew something about IBM's Project Big Green while 10 percent knew something about Hewlett-Packard's Planet Partners Program.

Now, I don't know whether it's because the survey was conducted earlier this year OR because they just don't see good differentiation yet, but I'll bet there are a whole lot of high-tech vendors that won't be thrilled to hear that IT decision makers still don't "get" their green IT propositions or don't know very much about them.

Second, and hold onto your chins, the surveyed businesses placed a higher priority on the green-ness of their printers and multifunction devices than they did on their data centers. Now, maybe these companies are smaller in stature, and therefore tend to outsource some of their data center operations. Regardless, the fact is that close to 60 percent of businesses have adopted a plan to reduce printing-related waste. Take heed HP, Xerox and all you big printing and copying technology folks.

I mentioned some other illuminating stats. Here are just a few that don't fall into my main themes: - Nearly two-thirds of the companies believe that being "green" is good for business - Slightly more than half have started to buy "greener' IT products or services. - About the same number believe that they need to focus on their supply chain's impact on the environment as part of their own green initiatives. - Close to 90 percent that said they purchase green tech in the past 18 months said they experienced energy-related cost savings because of their purchase. - Women were more likely to place a higher level of importance on pretty much any environmental or green initiative. - Respondents were looking for specific, quantifiable actions that they could take related to green projects. Here are the top 5 behaviors that the survey respondents associated with the green business movement: Recycling materials, offering flexible work options, adopting environmentally sustainable operations, reducing impacts from design, manufacturing or delivery, and offering environmentally conscious products/services.

You can find the complete, high-level survey results at this link.