Survey Finds Customers Will Pay More for Green

As more and more companies look to take responsibility for the environment by reducing their overall impact on it, green initiatives answering to this need, are sprouting up all over.

Data centers are particularly tasked with reducing heavy electricity use and are for this reason, looking increasingly to green solutions, even if it means they need to pay up to 10 percent more.

According to survey findings from IT Hosting provider Rackspace Managed Hosting, 62 percent of respondents said they are concerned and some actively addressing their companies impact on the environment.

Of the surveys respondents, 55 percent said they are beginning to take small steps like initiating recycling programs while 21 percent responded that they have taken bigger steps like choosing a green vendor and are already conserving energy.

And while price is still a factor for many, the survey did find that 52 percent of respondents are willing to pay 5 to 10 percent more for green products or services and 51 percent said are willing to trade 5 to 10 percent of server performance if it means lower carbon emissions.

 

"Although our customers responded that they would be willing to pay more and even trade some performance for lower carbon emissions, the good thing is that advances in technology seem to be filling the gap so that they shouldn't have to make major sacrifices to address these environmental concerns," said John Engates, CTO, Rackspace Managed Hosting in a statement to the press.

 

According to the surveys findings, 45 percent of respondents also said they "believe potential carbon taxes or environmental regulation will have some impact on their business, and 30 percent of respondents think green vendors will be a central part of their business strategy in five years."

 

Rackspace announced a few months back, their own green initiatives including finding more environmentally friendly ways of doing things and educating customers and employees through its GreenSpace initiative.

 

"Rackspace is taking full advantage of advances in green IT by implementing new technologies like AMD's (News - Alert) new Quad-Core Opteron(TM) processor and our new data center that will be powered by renewable energy," Engates also noted.