UK Start-up Offers Oracle Carbon Metrics

Zogix helps companies extract green data from existing applications

A London based software maker has developed tools to allow businesses to measure their carbon emissions using existing Oracle applications, the company announced this week.

Zogix, a member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork and the Oracle UK Partner programme, has launched what it describes as a Carbon Management Platform designed to integrate, and work on top of the database giants existing software.

Zogix Carbon Healthcheck integrates with Oracle iExpenses and Oracle iProcurement so that businesses can create a “clear picture” of their entire carbon footprint, the company claims.

“The immediate benefit is giving decision makers a holistic view and the transparency they need to take effective actions. Within 48 hours we have been able to show companies their emissions profile compared against industry benchmarks, where they should focus on to achieve savings immediately – all through an dashboard that provides a detailed breakdown of a company’s carbon footprint on company-wide, departmental and employee role levels,” said Zogix co-founder Sam Bose.

According to Zogix commercial director Ajay Vohora attitudes towards sustainability have changed over the last six months due to the economic downturn which has forced even more attention on the economic impact of reducing carbon emissions. By integrating with an existing platform such as Oracle, Zogix claims that companies can limit the financial costs of trying to measure and lower carbon emissions.

“Although there have been a lot of good intentions to adopt more sustainable business practices there have been significant practical issues to overcome about integrating carbon management solutions into existing IT infrastructures,” said Vohoro.

Oracle, via companies such as Zogix, is not the only IT vendor to target the increasing need for companies to be able to measure greenhouse gas emissions and other energy efficiency data. Earlier this week, ERP specialist SAP launched a set of sustainability initiatives including a line of management applications for environment health and safety (EHS).

SAP has also committed to reduce its own carbon footprint and has introduced the internal role of chief sustainability officer to oversee its green IT efforts.