Forrester: Green IT services landscape shifting
It's hard to believe that when I first started writing about green IT just three years ago, most people thought I was nuts or at least naive. But you don't have to believe in climate change to see that there are substantial benefits for companies that apply environmental-driven common sense to their IT strategies and procurement.
Forrester has just come out with a report, "Capitalizing on the Sustainability Consulting Services Opportunity," that illustrates how green IT has matured since I started contributing to this blog. There are two big changes on the horizon for IT managers to consider.
First, your team is likely to see a shift away from energy efficiency projects into projects that call for IT-enabled green business processes. It's not that energy efficiency is going away, its that the latter is deemed especially strategic as the economy moves back into a growth phase. By 2013, IT services companies focused on green initiatives expect the following mix:
Second, projects in North America will increase in the next three years, while European projects will taper. Approximately 33 percent of green IT services revenue will be attributable to North America projects by 2013, compared with 26 percent in 2010.
Overall, Forrester predicts there will be approximately $6.85 billion spent on sustainability consulting services: $3 billion will go to green IT services, $2.4 billion will go to IT-for-green projects, and $1.49 billion will go to green business initiatives that include an IT component. The public sector leads IT projects related to sustainability today, however the manufacturing sector will take a lead in investments by 2013, according to the Forrester projects.
Certain IT services companies have staked a serious claim in services of this sort. The players watched closely by Forrester include (in alphabetical order):
- Accenture
- Altos Origin
- Booz & Company
- BT Global Services
- Capgemini
- Cisco
- Cognizant
- CSC
- Deloitte
- EcomNets
- Fujitsu
- Getronics
- Hewlett-Packard
- IBM
- Infosys Technologies
- ITC Infotech
- KPMG
- Logica
- Orange Business Services
- PricewaterhouseCoopers
- SAP
- Siemens IT Solutions and Services
- Tata Consultancy Services
- T-Systems
- Wipro