Is carbon management software your new ERP challenge?

A couple of weeks ago, I referenced a Groom Energy report suggesting a boom for carbon and energy management software. Now, another U.S.-specific forecast suggests that oil and gas companies, telecommunications firms, and utilities will help lead the way in spending.

The data from Verdantix suggest that the overall market for carbon and energy management software will reach $558 million by 2014. That projection is specific to companies with more than $1 billion in revenue, which doesn't capture all the activity among midsize or small businesses that might be managing this information for competitive means.

What's interesting about these numbers from an IT perspective is that the people driving these purchases will primarily be energy and facilities managers, sustainability executives and managers, and those worried about environmental, health and safety concerns. Which suggests to me that many of these applications might be procured as a service, in order to get around IT processes that get in the way of rapid adoption. But, since these applications need to be integrated with traditional enterprise software in order to be truly useful, IT managers better bone up on what's out there.

I'll leave you with this observation to ponder, which comes from the Verdantix analyst that wrote this report, Peter Charville-Mort "Energy and carbon software is following the same customer adoption trajectory as prior enterprise software markets such as CRM and ERP."