Hardly a day goes by without another IT company telling us how green it has become. To be honest, it’s getting a little tedious.

Yes, I know climate change is one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) challenges facing the planet, but the cynic in me sees a very large bandwagon with a lot of people jumping on.

Green? You bet we are!

There was a classic example during the past week when everyone’s favourite motivational speaker, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, took to the stage at the CeBIT trade show in Hannover, Germany.

Ballmer captured the attention of the big crowd by claiming that Microsoft is now an environmental convert, studiously looking for ways it can help users of technology reduce their power consumption.

As evidence of this new planet-loving attitude he claimed that Windows Vista was a more power efficient operating system than its predecessor, Windows XP. To back this up he pointed to recent research conducted by UK-based PC Pro Labs that found a company with 200 PCs running Vista produced 45 tons less carbon per year than a similar company running Windows XP.

Excuse me? How on earth can the most processor-hungry OS ever developed by the Redmond giant be green? Anyone noticed how hot the average Vista PC gets? Perhaps they factored in the frustration factor. It runs so slowly that people end up turning their machines off and taking the dog for a walk instead.

Meanwhile another IT company bitten by the green bug is Sun Microsystems which has been building what it calls eco-friendly data centres in the US and plans to roll them out around the world. Rival HP is following a similar path, planning to reduce its 85 global data centres into just six. The company estimates such consolidation will save it millions of dollars in operating costs while also reducing its carbon footprint.

These kinds of initiatives make a lot of sense. Consolidation, helped by technologies such as virtualisation, will be a recurring theme throughout the business world for at least the next few years. Companies following this path can legitimately claim to be helping the planet.

Other recent examples are monitor manufacturers releasing green monitors, networking equipment manufacturers offering green switches and telecoms companies such as Telstra spruiking the planet-saving benefits of their services.

My point is this: Just because an IT company declares itself ‘green’ doesn’t mean you should drag out the cheque book and start spending. You can expect virtually every technology company to start spruiking its eco-credentials during the coming months, if it hasn’t started already.

Sure, listen to what they’ve got to say and if it makes sense, perhaps they’re worth a closer look. But just because a company says their offerings are green doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll actually help the future of the planet. The bottom line still rules.

As with everything in the world of technology, the truth lies behind the hype. Green ain't necessarily green.