An analyst has broken down the growing channel opportunity around a rebounding sustainability sector as he declared the topic is enjoying a comeback following a “trickier period”.
Speaking at a recent breakfast briefing, Omdia Senior Analyst Ben Caddy claimed there is “plenty of opportunity in sustainability” for partners despite the rise of “green hushing”.
“Sustainability has been through a turbulent period due to some of the geopolitics around it,” Caddy said.
“But really, what we’re seeing now is that, in an increasingly volatile world – in a world where you can’t get hardware on time at the volume you need and the price you expected – circularity and sustainability are really coming back into the fray as a key area for how businesses are resilient going forward.”
Refurbished tech “boom”
With the memory crunch “putting strain” on the traditional 3-5-year refresh cycle, some 16% of customers are plumping for cheaper or refurbished hardware, Caddy said.
“When we speak to partners lately, they’re telling us that refurbished tech is naturally having a real boom right now,” he said.
“Customers who normally weren’t open to refurbished tech are now being forced by the price hikes to reconsider and actually look at their options and see how they can save money on their IT procurement while also delivering a sustainability benefit.”
The lines between ITADs and the traditional channel are “blurring”, Caddy said as he flagged up efforts by the likes of Computacenter, SCC and Advania (see here, here and here) to build their own device takeback and refurbishment capabilities.
Vendors including HP (see more here), as well as Lenovo, Cisco and HPE, are also starting to take second-user equipment more seriously by launching certified refurbished schemes, Caddy added.
“Services conversation”
Caddy went on to break down the sustainability opportunity for partners, saying sustainability and circularity are “becoming more of a services conversation than they have been before”.
One trend Omdia is picking up on is a heightened desire among customers to refurbish kit they already own so they can redeploy it in their install base, Caddy said.
“Partners can be strategic advisors to customers on all sorts of areas of sustainability,” he added.
“That can be advising on how their IT strategy is in line with their sustainability goals. It can be understanding the regulatory pressures they might be facing. It can be designing for sustainability – proactively thinking about more circular lifecycles.”
Sustainable procurement is another hotspot. This could mean choosing refurbished tech or vendors based on their sustainability credentials, Caddy said.
He highlighted GreenOps – namely helping customers optimise for costs and carbon – as another emerging services opportunity.
“Nuanced picture”
Echoing his keynote at Canalys EMEA Forums last October, Caddy acknowledged that the progress of sustainability in the industry is a “nuanced picture”.
“You won’t see CEOs so prominently talking about ESG and net zero in their earnings calls the way they used to, in response to some of the geopolitics, and that’s really a trend that we call green hushing,” he said.
It’s also “obvious” that hyperscaler emissions are “going in the wrong direction”, he added.
“But actually, there’s plenty of opportunity in sustainability,” Caddy added as took a glass-half-full view of the sector he covers day-in-day-out as an analyst.
“Circularity is really helping companies get through this difficult DRAM pricing dynamic that we’re going through, and also there’s huge opportunity with efficiency, with this data centre build out, with this volatility around power, which is obviously a very clear case for energy-efficient IT.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
