Market Momentum: Green IT 2008

We reviewed the sustainability-related activities of 13 leading IT systems vendors from 2007 to 2008 by examining public announcements on their Web sites. Three takeaways emerged from our analysis: 1) The rate of green-related announcements increased notably, with more than twice as many in 2008 as 2007; 2) product announcements were by far the most frequent type of announcement, far outpacing partnership, internal activities, and especially announcements of customer adoption of green IT; and 3) IBM is far and away the most active systems vendor, with double the number of announcements of any other supplier. Looking ahead, we advise vendors' green strategists to focus on customer-adoption announcements as the best way of distinguishing their announcements and their strategies from the crowd.