When I was talking to a VC this week, we were discussing Hara.
Another company he mentioned was C3.
There isn't much out there on C3, but there are job postings.
One of the things I've always thought as a weakness of Hara is what their SW does. But, Hara does have a great VC investment and excellent marketing. Which makes a lot of sense given most of the people who are buying environmental impact solutions aren't technical software people.
But, this leaves the opening for C3 to come in with a SW system for Energy Resource Management. Being a technical guy, I like the C3 job posting list. Compare this to Hara's current technical job posting.
So is Hara really just a reporting system? Vs. C3 is trying to complex energy resource modeling.
Ideas move quickly, and the folks at Hara probably realize their weakness and are thinking of ways to compete vs. C3.
Compare the founder of C3 vs. Hara. Siebel vs. SAP.
Hara founder.
Amit Chatterjee, CEO and Founder
Amit Chatterjee is CEO and Founder of Hara, the fastest growing provider of environmental and energy management solutions. Mr. Chatterjee has been at the forefront of shaping a new category of business software and has championed the notion of organizational metabolism. Under Chatterjee’s leadership Hara addresses an end-to-end environmental and energy business process from reporting to reduction across an organization and its value chain. Mr.Chatterjee is a thought-leader on green economy innovation, energy independence and entrepreneurship. He has participated in prominent conferences such as the United Nations Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, and has been a featured participant at Fortune Brainstorm Tech, Aspen Institute’s Clean Energy Economic Forum and the Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change Conference. Mr. Chatterjee is a published author ofThe Post Carbon Economy and is on the board of the Corporate Responsibility Officers Association. Prior to founding Hara he led SAP’s fast-growing Governance, Risk and Compliance unit. Mr. Chatterjee developed his strategic and leadership experience while at McKinsey & Co., working with clients such as SAP, Cisco and Oracle. Mr. Chatterjee has B.A. degrees in Political Science and Chemistry from UC Berkeley, with graduate studies at Stanford University.
C3 founder.
Thomas M. Siebel
Founder and Chairman
Mr. Siebel is the Chairman of First Virtual Group, a diversified holding company with interests in investment management, commercial real estate, agribusiness, and philanthropy. Mr. Siebel was the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Siebel Systems. From 1984 through 1990, he was an executive at Oracle Corporation. Mr. Siebel serves on the Board of Advisors of the Stanford University College of Engineering, the University of California, Berkeley College of Engineering, and the University of Illinois College of Engineering. He is the Founder and Chairman of the Meth Project and the Siebel Scholars Foundation. Mr. Siebel is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he received a BA in history, an MBA, and a MS in computer science.
Hara has the market now for environmental monitoring software, but long term I would place bets on C3 for a green data center software solution.
The CEO of C3 is a mechanical engineer.
Edward Abbo
Mr. Abbo is Chief Executive Officer of C3. He was formerly Senior Vice President at Oracle Corporation responsible for Oracle’s application and SaaS products including CRM and ERP & Supply Chain products. Prior to joining Oracle in 2006, he was Senior Vice President of Technology and Chief Technology Officer for Siebel Systems. During his twelve-year tenure at the company, he was a member of the Siebel executive management team, Founder’s Circle of first employees, and led Engineering, Industry Products, and Sales Consulting organizations. Prior to Siebel Systems, he worked in a variety of sales and consulting roles at Oracle Corporation.
Mr. Abbo earned a M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.S. degree in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University.
There are companies like Sentilla for data center energy, but there is no reason why a well designed solution shouldn't work across the enterprise.
Fortunately, there are already many other vendors in this market with well tested solutions. The choice is not (nor it will be) Hara vs. C3. Past performance in CRM or ERP software space is no guarantee for success in energy and environmental resource management.
Requirements for environmental and energy reporting have existed for years. The Mandatory Reporting of Greenhouse Gases Rule of September 2009 represents yet another element (and a relatively small one in that) in a long list of environmental compliance activities that companies in the US are subject to. The Clean Air Act (1970), Clean Water Act (1977), Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act (MPRSA) (1980), Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) (1974), Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) (1976), Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA, or Superfund) (1980), and the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 and about 30 other similar regulations have already created a software market in the US for environmental information management and reporting. Companies like IHS, Locus Technologies, or Intelex, have been building solutions for this space for over a decade and with their solid products, market share, and plenty of innovation, are far ahead of companies that have just entered this market looking at it from a bubble perspective.
Most executives at two companies came from SAP, Oracle or other large ERP vendor. These are the companies that told us just a few years ago that they would organize our health records with innovative and compelling software. We all know how these efforts have fared. Now they will boil the ocean again and organize our energy and GHG records. The reality is that innovation in this arena is not going to come from a WEBVan like companies. There are already hundreds of small companies that have the lead in this space.
Posted by: Violeta Fox | Sep 27, 2010 at 06:33 PM
Please provide a list of companies in this space from best of breed to market leader
Posted by: Chris Molloy | Jan 12, 2011 at 09:00 AM