Whem it comes to being green, most IT users -- and many solution providers as well -- are lost in a forest of hype.

As an example, Gartner reported last August that IT users are confused about the definition of "green IT." They don't know what products and technologies are available today vs. in the future and, therefore, where they should invest their money.

"About 60 percent said they are completely confused about what green means, particularly in the next 12 months, when they are facing more financial pressures than ever before," says Rakesh Kumar, vice president at Gartner. The study listed a variety of products, services and technologies considered green, and recommended which ones IT users should focus on in the near, intermediate and long terms. (For details, see sidebar on page 23.)

Even solution providers wanting to respond to the greening of IT aren't quite sure of the meaning. What's green can change from one customer to the next, they say, depending on the size of the client, the location of its facilities and even the terms of its lease. "What might be vital to an enterprise of 15,000 to 20,000 users may not play so well with a 100-person company," says Francis Poeta, president and chief technical architect at solution provider P&M Computers. And location plays a big role in the cost of electricity and space. "Green may mean one thing in Omaha, another in Phoenix, and yet something else in metro Manhattan," Poeta says.

Regardless of what you call green, successful solution providers tailor solutions to meet their customers' needs and deliver business value. "Most people get the warm fuzzies when they think they are being eco-friendly, but that's not necessarily enough to change purchasing behavior," says Crystal Swart, marketing manager at Ingram Micro. "There has to be some ROI involved."

To take the pulse of the green scene, Channel Advisor talked to three solution providers who are all "selling green" by meeting the needs of their clients.

Selling Sustainability
Executives at Varsity Technologies, based in San Francisco, have struggled with the meaning of green. The 12-year-old solution provider started in the education and nonprofit markets. Those segments still make up more than half its revenue, but Varsity has been expanding among small and midsize customers. To continue growing in this space, Varsity wanted to rebrand itself but wasn't quite sure how, according to Patrick Ciccarelli, president and CEO. The company specializes in two green-related technologies -- unified communications and virtualization -- but it was hearing a lot of "greenwash" from vendors and distributors. "They were asking us to do green IT marketing," he says.

By that he means using the term "green" to describe virtually everything and yet nothing. "What does green mean?" he asks. "It doesn't really have a business value. If a vendor asks me how much more my customer will pay for this product if it lowers their carbon footprint, I tell them ?nothing.' "

What does have business value is sustainability. "We talk about operational sustainability, economic sustainability and environmental sustainability," says Ciccarelli. The priority for a business is profitability, which is economic sustainability. "If you sacrifice economic sustainability for environmental sustainability," he notes, "you run the risk of going out of business."

Particularly in these tough economic times, Varsity's approach is to show clients how virtualization and unified communications technologies can make them more efficient and enable them to do more with less. "As soon as we help them do that," says Ciccarelli, "then we point out that we've also helped them to lower their carbon footprint, to leverage technology to create a better work/life balance for their employees, and to make their company more adaptive."

Small companies like Varsity's clients, which range in size from 25 to 200 users, usually won't get a big ROI from the energy savings associated with virtualization. He does explain to them, however, that virtualization will allow them to do more with fewer servers in less space. And with desktop virtualization, clients can get more use out of existing hardware.

"That's how you make money from green IT," he says. The whole conversation about sustainability "changes the dynamic of the client relationship. We are no longer pitching a product, but rather shared values. And those shared values lead to high-value solutions with higher margins."

Making Business Run Better
Virtualization is a specialization at P&M Computers, but Poeta is careful about calling it green or even touting energy savings. P&M focuses on midmarket clients with between 100 and 1,000 users in and around New York City, particularly manufacturers and financial service companies. Among these customers, the primary drivers for virtualization are disaster recovery, server consolidation and the capability to create a development environment for new applications.

His customers don't adopt virtualization to save energy, says Poeta. "It's more about how to make the business run better and faster," he says. "We are more involved in showing customers business value, and hopefully business value includes lowering costs, not just in the functioning of the business but also environmental costs."

Poeta also finds that some customers don't care about energy efficiency because they are not paying for their power. In Manhattan, he notes, clients may have long-term leases that include utilities. What's more, even when customers want to save energy, it can be challenging to find the ROI for the smaller companies. "It's difficult to quantify where you're saving energy unless you have large numbers of machines," he says. "If you only have 250 users, it can be questionable."

Doing Good by Going Green
That's even more problematic at New Jersey-based Powersolution.com. Serving customers that average 25 to 50 seats, the solution provider can rarely make a compelling case based on savings of $20 to $40 on monthly electricity bills, notes CEO David Dadian.

But Dadian did notice that his customers needed help getting rid of old IT equipment. So the company developed a program it calls psRecycleIT, in which it inventories customers' old equipment, then does forensic data scrubbing and ensures proper disposal.

Although New Jersey recently passed an Electronic Waste Recycling Act, that wasn't the impetus for the service, which Dadian started more than three years ago. Rather, he simply wanted to solve a growing problem among his clients.

Powersolution.com doesn't make much profit on the operation, frankly, and what profit it does make is usually donated to an environmental group that plants trees. That way, his company not only ensures that he and his clients don't contribute to e-waste, but that they give back as well -- helping to grow forests of real trees, not hype.