Going green means seeing green with SaaS 2 April, 2009 By John Krzykowski and Steve Crawford

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SaaS saves hard dollars through reduced hardware, software, labor, and energy expenditures, and is attractive to SMBs for the following reasons:

It can be purchased for an affordable month-to-month subscription fee.

Businesses pay only for the licenses they need, as long as they need them.

There are no costs for software upgrades or support and maintenance.

It doesn't require dedicated on-site IT resources.

No hardware needs to be installed, monitored, protected, or upgraded.

Web collaboration tools provide a standardized communication platform to help companies manage information overload. For less than the cost of an overnight delivery package, these real-time, on-demand services organize projects and simplify and centralize the exchange of information. Teams can easily share documents and presentations, increasing productivity and profitability.

Web conferencing and collaboration tools also enable companies to minimize the expense, hassle, and negative environmental impact of travel. They make it easy to conduct sales presentations, hold company and shareholder meetings, and offer interactive training sessions with participants anywhere in the world.

Remote IT management also reduces response times and travel expenses by giving IT personnel remote access to company PCs and servers for troubleshooting, file transfer, and help desk services.

To cut energy consumption and enhance productivity, businesses can implement telecommuting programs using on-demand services that provide secure access to office systems, files, and applications. Employees drive less and companies reduce office space requirements.

For example, the U.S. white-collar workforce burns more than 583 million gallons of gasoline commuting to work each week. If, on average, one employee worked from home one day a week, 1,680 pounds of CO2 emissions would be saved each year, according to Telework Exchange, a public-private partnership focused on promoting and expanding telework options. And studies by IBM, Cisco, American Express, and the U.S. Patent Office have shown that teleworking programs motivate and help retain key employees. In fact, the studies have documented an increase in productivity ranging as high as 30 to 40 percent. Data on equipment and energy use also supports the positive impact SaaS can have on SMBs. The average energy expense of an office server is $50 to $100 per month, for example, while typical utilization is less than 10 percent. In areas with high utility rates, the cost of the utilities alone to support one single-use server will exceed the cost of the hardware in less than three years. And that's not taking into account the cost of depreciation, allocation of office space, and personnel resources to maintain the server.

Hosted email and remote backup services enable companies to take advantage of data storage in disaster-proof data centers to save energy and money. SaaS reduces the need to invest in, operate, and maintain on-premise software and hardware, while providing the peace of mind that data is safe and can be quickly and easily restored.

To sell your customers on incorporating green initiatives into their IT plan, you need to show them that it's about more than being good stewards of the environment. As their trusted adviser, you need to demonstrate that it's also about enhanced productivity and profitability.

JOHN KRZYKOWSKI is general manager of 19Marketplace, a provider of name-brand on-demand applications and services for value-added resellers. STEVE CRAWFORD is vice president of marketing for Jamcracker Inc., an on-demand services delivery company.

This article was originally published in in ChannelPro-SMB.