Greenwashing, IT Services Style

Having worked there once upon a time, I have a lot of respect for the way Accenture adapts their services portfolio to take advantage of changing market drivers. They have been, however, a bit overzealous in the past with PDAs (public displays of affection) for market opportunities that they believe are ripe with potential. When I joined the firm, they had yet to grasp the magnitude of the discontinuity that was the Internet, though I had already been building business cases for the platform potential of the Web for four years. While Accenture was able to turn on a dime and seize the moment, I felt they were engaged in a bit of overkill with the amount of resource they dedicated without a clear direction.

So I do have a healthy level of skepticism on this recent announcement from the firm.

Accenture has introduced the Accenture Green Technology Suite, a comprehensive set of tools designed to help an organization assess its environmental standing, provide recommendations on how to address its carbon footprint by improvingthe way IT is managed, and support the entire organization’s green agenda.

These new tools have been designed to provide everything from detailed assessments of where the enterprise sits within a green “maturity spectrum,” to suggesting IT initiatives that can be undertaken to proactively address the company’s future carbon footprint. The tools also help calculate the impact of the specific initiatives in terms of workplace environmental efficiency and data center energy savings.

On the surface, it feels more than a little like greenwashing. While I have no doubt that services to assist enterprises in making their technology-related carbon footprint substantively lower will emerge in the market in due time, I want to see what the man behind the curtain really has for us before I give Accenture props for this move.