My colleague Daniel Krauss and I are putting the finishing touches on a comprehensive research report on the current state and future prospects for enterprise carbon and energy management (ECEM) software. We surveyed more than 40 suppliers, did interviews and demos with more than 20, and drew upon our ongoing discussions with consultants, service providers, and of course enterprise buyers that are participating in the takeoff phase of the ECEM market. One of the interesting takeaways from our research is that ECEM is actually three market segments, not one.

ECEM is the enterprise-wide category, aimed at executives and line-of-business management, helping them to monitor, analyze, and manage carbon emissions and energy consumption across all companies assets and activities.

Closely related but so far distinct from ECEM is operational carbon and energy management (OCEM), which is more narrowly targeted at facility and operations managers and their province of corporate facilities and infrastructure assets (buildings, manufacturing facilities, vehicles, etc.).

And a third set of buyers and asset categories comprise ICT carbon and energy management (ICTCEM) systems, designed to help IT and communications systems management understand and reduce the carbon/energy footprint of ICT assets like data centers and corporate networks.

And in parallel with distinct but related buyer segments, there are three classes of suppliers emerging to address these opportunities (see figure below, and click for full-sized.)

1. ECEM software targeting executive/business levels -- the most crowded segment today.

These solutions are geared to help executive and line-of-business management monitor, analyze and manage carbon emissions, as well as energy consumption, which is their principal source, across operational or functional silos. These systems act as aggregators of energy consumption information coming from various sources, and use embedded carbon calculation methods to automate carbon emission analyses.