Clean enterprise software

At the Awards Gala for the 2008 California Clean Tech Open at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco last week, I came across several companies with cleantech software products for enterprises.

I spoke with Charlie Crissman, President & CEO of Seattle-based Goose Networks, which offers a series of tools for companies of 100 employees or more to help staff reduce the cost and environmental impact of their commutes. The SaaS solution can be plugged into a company's existing intranet (company branded, of course), and is then offered as an HR benefit. The product contains detailed information on a wide range of commute options for specific cities (so far including Seattle, the Bay Area, Miami, and Washington, D.C.). A commuting tool automatically matches up employees who could carpool, or suggests a range of possible public transportation options. Goose Networks took home the Runner-up prize in the Transportation category.

The winner in the Smart Power category was Power Assure, based in Santa Clara, which also won the Sustainability award. Donnie K. Foster, President & CEO, told me that their energy management software service, which is currently being used by Facebook, was like a "monitor of monitors" for the data center, improving energy efficiency 50-80%. Not only do they monitor standard server data points, such as CPU, memory, and network utilization, but can also actively monitor the load placed on the applications themselves, as well as environmental factors such as HVAC (e.g. temperature levels). The company offers a combination of services and monitoring software to achieve efficiency through what Donnie called "load shifting" (balancing load between servers) and "load shedding" (dynamically shutting down and starting up servers to match usage requirements).

Finally, Enverity is a Burlingame-based company providing a greenhouse gas data management solution, which companies can use to track and report on their greenhouse gas emissions, meet compliance requirements, and even produce the necessary documentation to submit to the appropriate authorities to generate the applicable carbon credits (e.g. for the Chicago Climate Exchange). I spoke with Eric van Gestel, President & CEO, who said the company is focusing on air, water, and hazardous waste tracking for now, and has a number of major customers, including Johnson Controls, Gillette, and George Washington University. The company has stayed lean, finding that they are able to scale the number of individual facilities they can support (currently 123) without adding a lot of staff.