Do Greener Pastures Await Green Content Management Vendors?

As another Earth Day passed, I thought it was appropriate to pass along some green tidbits within the content management and IT space. I ran across Jarrod Gingras' post referring to how the green movement is affecting purchasing decisions for SaaS-based Web content solutions.During his research for an upcoming CMS Watch report, Gingras said several customers walked the eco walk when choosing their hosted solution, commenting that it was the first time he'd heard companies cite it specifically as the factor that drove them to buy.

He also mentions Clickability and CrownPeak as two of the companies leading the green charge. I've spoken to Clickability a few times in an effort to understand what it really takes to perpetuate a green agenda in an already noisy field.

One of Clickability's press releases about its user conference hit my in-box recently and besides thinking what a treat it would be to jet off to San Francisco, the other thing I noticed was the promotion of a green-oriented session called "SaaS is Green: Easy on the Budget, Easy on the Planet." What a simple concept. Get your influencers, customers, and other constituencies together and talk about real green scenarios. Hell, you might even gain a customer or two and even get accused of being a corporation with a conscience.

But all is not rosy in the land of the green giants, as shown by Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum's recent study. Here are a few highlights of its findings:

• Three-quarters of respondents gave their organizations a "C" grade or worse in ability to control IT energy consumption. • Almost two-thirds of respondents have no specific green plans in place. • Nearly 20% spend more than $1 million per year on IT energy consumption, and 8% spend more than $10 million. • Almost half of those polled said IT energy consumption increased in their organization last year, even as the cost of energy rose. • 46% reported that they had run out of space, power, or cooling capacity. • 20% estimate annual savings of hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of dollars are achievable through efficiencies in server-based and network storage.

But as I like to be the consummate optimist, I did notice the masked Drupal bandit is powering one of the larger sites for Earth Day.

Who says managing content can't help Mother Earth?