INDIAN WELLS, CA — Even though resellers see green IT having a prominent place on the horizon, they're still finding it a tough sell -- even if their small-business customers are ready to make the shift.

A poll taken at the Varnex Fall Conference held last week in Indian Wells found that 42 percent of value-added resellers (VARs) have noted that green IT is on the rise in the marketplace, but 33 percent said it was still a hard sell to customers.

Scott Campbell, writing on ChannelWeb, was at the conference and offers this assessment:

During a roundtable session at the conference, several vendor executives said they were surprised by the poll results.

"Two weeks ago, I was in a group of CEOs and CIOs, companies up to 700 employees, and their number one hot button was the greening of the industry," said Gary Koopman, vice president of distribution sales at Hewlett-Packard.

[...]So why do nearly half of the Varnex solution providers polled believe it's a hard sell or a niche play? The answer could lie in how VARs are marketing the technology. If customers only hear about helping the environment, and not potential cost savings, they may be more likely to pass on green IT, said Benny Madrid, director of market development at Microsoft.

"What is the business justification for it? If companies are going to make investments, green is important, but the onus is on us to show the business value and cost savings in addition to being friendly to the environment," Madrid said.

Indeed, some solution providers said selling green IT is easier if you take out the green, and any perceived political affiliations around it, and focus more on energy cost savings that can be realized with new technology.

It turns out that for small companies especially -- though only slightly moreso than for medium to large firms -- the cost savings are going to be the big selling point for green IT. If you can convince a company that these purchases or upgrades will not only offer short-term ROIs, but also immediate savings, that will make the decision to spend a little money up front much more palatable.

A study released this fall found that just over half of small businesses have either already launched or planned to launch green IT projects in the next two years, a finding that echoed an earlier study by Info-Tech and IBM looking at adoption rates among mid-sized firms.

Read the full writeup of the Varnex conference at the ChannelWeb site.