News

Carbonetworks contributor to ClimateBiz

Michael Meehan, ClimateBiz
... Until recently, mainstream IT analysts barely tracked the environmental software sector and vendors responded with relatively little innovation. With respect to carbon management, innovation in the traditional environmental software industries (Environment, Health, & Safety and compliance vendors) matched the relatively slow progress of climate change regulation. For years the industry maxim seemed to be that 'slow and steady wins the race.'

The race, however, is changing. Carbon has become a prime focus of the industry and traditional vendors are finding it difficult to adjust. Most vendors have been vertically-focused, targeting facility managers, directors, and others who require data acquisition and aggregation for their reporting needs.

But as carbon becomes a corporate mandate, traditional vendors have difficulty bridging the "c-level gap" and are finding new competition from both above and below their market niche. Translating their data in a way that makes sense to a CFO or CEO is no small task and for most vendors the market isn't particularly well-suited to the build-or-buy decisions of the dot-com era. With flatlining or shrinking revenues, it is very difficult for the market incumbents to react to this rapidly changing market.