'Green' IT: A feasible proposition?
Published: 27 Sep 2004 17:05 BST
Steve May is going to test whether "green" marketing clicks with customers in the faceless Web-hosting business.
May is the founder and chief executive of Solar Data Centres, a company that bills itself as one of the first hosting outfits powered entirely by renewable energy.
The company currently purchases its energy from a third party that uses only renewable resources, and by the end of next year it plans to open a small data centre powered entirely by electricity generated from its own solar panels.
May -- who drives an electric car to work -- has made a personal commitment to purchasing renewable energy, but his hosting venture is purely commercial. His gambit is more about marketing than it is about tree hugging, he says.
"It's a completely different spin. It allows us to distinguish ourselves from the oceans of very similar service providers," May says.
May's operation is tiny in comparison to the behemoths of the multibillion-dollar Web-hosting market, which includes IBM and AT&T. But Solar Data Centres is slowly carving out a niche, serving more than 300 customers, such as the US Department of Energy's million Solar Roofs programme and the Portland Oregon Visitors Association, which have a commitment to use renewable sources of energy.
"I suspect that early customers will be the deep-green, smaller, entrepreneurial companies that are always looking for the next thing they can do," says Jacquelyn Ottman, author of the book "Green Marketing" and founder of J. Ottman Consulting, which works with businesses on environmentally friendly procedures and design.
Solar Data Centres was started about five years ago, when May acquired a small Web-hosting company called Solar Host that used photovoltaic cells to power about 12 servers. That initial venture charged a premium for solar-powered hosting services.
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