Leading Indian IT companies are planning to tap the $380-million low-carbon IT market, which is projected to grow at a CAGR of 40% to $4.2 billion by 2017, according to US-based Pike Research, a clean technology market research and consulting firm.
In 2009, the market included a carbon management software pie worth $132 million, and consulting, implementation and outsourcing services chunk of $248 million. The carbon management software market is expected to grow to $1.2 billion and the consulting, implementation and outsourcing services market is slated to touch $3 billion by 2017.
While Wipro has struck a co-innovation agreement with German software company SAP to develop sustainability and energy management solutions, TCS has entered into a collaboration with UK-based low-carbon advisory firm Xynto.
The Wipro-SAP collaboration would seek to ride on the formers green IT services and the latters sustainability performance management and environment, health and safety management applications.
According to Sanjay Gupta, senior vice-president, service products, Wipro Technologies, “Wipro is working with partners like SAP to build a suite of solutions to enable companies follow sustainable business practices for regulatory and reporting compliance needs, and to gain greater efficiency in managing environmental impact.” New solutions would complement Wipros sustainability services stack that covers full carbon lifecycle, including measuring, managing and monitoring.
Similarly, the TCS-Xynteo partnership aims to enable companies to cut carbon emissions and increase productivity of their value chains. While making the announcement recently, AS Lakshminarayanan, vice-president & head of TCS Europe, said, “We recognise the need for collaboration to create solutions that address the challenge of global climate challenge by leveraging technology.”
The important role of technology in helping the world to make a transition to a low-carbon economy can be gauged from the fact that smart IT alone has the potential to help reduce global greenhouse gases by 15% by 2020.
And with the Wal-Marts and the Tescos of the world recently taking on carbon emission reduction targets in their supply chains, and countries like the United Kingdom, France, Australia and Japan adopting carbon labels, the role of IT in the fight against climate change only gets bigger. Besides, the low-carbon IT market is bound to get a shot in the arm with even developing countries like China and India committing to reduce their carbon intensity.
Acknowledging that the use of IT solutions in carbon management is likely to get more traction in coming years, Ashutosh Pandey, CEO, advisory business, Emergent Ventures India, a carbon advisory firm, adds, “IT companies need to focus not only on developing off-the-shelf solutions but also customised company products.”
Rama Vedashree, a vice-president with IT industry association Nasscom, too, says, “In the emerging context, building capabilities and expertise in the carbon space would give Indian IT companies an added competitive edge in the low-carbon space because they have already an advantage owing to their large customer base and deep footprint and the trust they enjoy.”
It may be all the more needed because Indian IT companies will be competing not only with niche players like Hara, CarbonView and Verisae, but also established software and services firms like Accenture, IBM and PE International, which have already taken a headstart in the low-carbon space.
Source: The Financial Express
Published on 11 July 2010