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The Cisco energy tax isn’t about “Green”
Nortel’s focus on helping enterprises calculate their Cisco energy tax a few weeks ago at Interop has created some buzz with customers, media and bloggers. And that’s not just here on Buzzboard (with posts here and here), but with coverage on Network World’s Cisco Subnet blog, on RedMonk, on TechRepublic, and on a couple of blogs (here for example) that focus on green trends. It was all enough that last week one of Cisco’s data center marketing guys responded on their blog and then followed the trail of coverage with comments trying to pull people back to his post.
While this level of interest isn’t surprising, what is unusual is the complete opposite reaction this topic has compared to our recent Green IT messages. As the owner of this blog, I look daily at the amount of readers and clicks we get. One of the nice benefits of the blog is having a true real-time insight into what people really care about…they vote with clicks, comments and time spent on the page.
And here’s what I know - people don’t care much about green, but they sure do care about energy efficiency. Admittedly I’m using a sample of just this blog’s readers - but the numbers tell the story. During the week of April 21st we focused all our coverage on Green IT, and traffic to Buzzboard was lower than any other week from March to now. Conversely, the week of Interop and following with discussions on our energy efficiency advantages over Cisco have had big traffic on Buzzboard that has spread to other blogs.
So what’s so exciting about energy efficiency compared to “green IT”? I think it’s the more direct correlation to the bottom line. Less energy means less money spent on energy, while the Green message encompasses much more than just that one point.
Interestingly, a recent IDC study asked “Why is IT supplier ‘greenness’ important to your organization?” The #1 response by an overwhelming margin was suppliers who had “Green products which reduce OPEX.” See the chart pictured for details.
So what about you, is your organization more willing to decisions on “green” overall, or on the OPEX savings that energy efficiency can provide?
