Sustainability and environmental consciousness are running themes in society, that are now more prevalent than ever before. For businesses, the idea of sustainability and environmental friendliness is said to be at the forefront of many of their agendas. Yet, it appears that there may be a disconnect between what businesses want to do, and what actions they actually put into practice.
A study conducted earlier this year found that from a candidate pool of 1,500 executives across Europe, Middle East and Africa, including the UK, 90% of respondents labelled environmental, social and governance as a high priority for their respective organisations. However, these organisations across these locations, on average, were only allocating 9% of their budget towards such initiatives.
The reason for this misalignment is usually because companies are unaware where they can use their budget to make the biggest difference to their carbon footprint and environmental impact.
One strategy many businesses are favouring to lessen their environmental impact is migrating to the cloud. The cloud is an extremely useful tool generally, as a way of improving day-to-day business operations, but is also great to use for environmental reasons such as reduced energy consumption and dematerialisation.
In this article, we’re going to discuss 5 reasons why migrating to the cloud can be the best way to help your business lessen its environmental impact.
1. Reduced Energy Consumption
When powering an on-premise server, a lot of energy is needed for it to perform as it should. This power is generally used on two things, powering the server itself, and powering the cooling system that stops the server from overheating.
Transitioning to a cloud-based infrastructure will help to lessen this energy consumption as there will no longer be a need to power your own server, along with its supporting equipment. Your servers and related equipment will now be housed in a data centre away from your premises.
Data centres will often have a more energy efficient way of running this equipment to significantly reduce their energy output. A lot of data centres tend to offer shared servers to use energy more efficiently and are powered through renewable energy sources.
2. Reduction in Electronic Waste
Like everything, electronic equipment also has a lifecycle and ultimately this does come to an end. Often, we think that electronics can be disposed of in normal household waste, but this isn’t the case. More often than not, companies will not dispose of their equipment in the correct way and inevitably it will end up sitting in landfill for years to come.
The reason for this incorrect disposal can usually be attributed to two factors: the company is not educated on how to get rid of their equipment correctly, and sometimes the task can be time consuming and not a priority for these companies too.
However, when transitioning to the cloud, moving your electronic waste will no longer be an issue, or your responsibility. Because your servers and cooling equipment are now situated away from your premises, it is the job of your cloud service providers to dispose of this equipment at the end of its life.
Further, cloud service providers are experts on how to dispose of their electric equipment properly, so you can guarantee that at the end of its lifecycle, any technology will be disposed of in a way that creates minimal damage to the environment.
3. Promotes De-Materialisation
An attractive feature of the cloud is its ability to share documents with other colleagues at a moment’s notice, in any location and from the majority of devices. Because of this, the cloud significantly reduces the need for physical resources such as printed out meeting agendas.
Where there would usually be a high volume of waste created when preparing for monthly team meetings and client briefings, any important information can now be shared to the relevant employees without generating unnecessary waste. Even where resources such as recycled paper are readily available nowadays, the cloud allows for there to be no physical waste created.
4. Renewable Energy Power
As already mentioned earlier, when your company transitions to the cloud, you are also ensuring that your servers are being powered by renewable energy sources too.
Most cloud data centres are now powered via renewable energy sources such as solar, geothermal and wind.
This is important to note when looking at how your company can lessen its carbon footprint, as renewable energy sources produce essentially no greenhouse gases. Further, data centres are often built close to the energy source powering them, meaning that there is no extra energy is wasted in powering the data centres too.
5. Shared Data Centres
In the past, businesses have tended to use their own on-premise servers to store their company’s data. Still, it is rare that these servers are actually used to their full potential, with larger scale companies sometimes only using approximately 70% of their server power, and smaller companies using significantly less. Where these servers use a large amount of energy too, if they’re not being used to their full potential, a lot of energy is being used and wasted.
However, nowadays, it is common for cloud computer systems to offer a service which allows data centre servers, to be shared across multiple companies to ensure servers are being used optimally.
Distributing server space with other companies is an effective way to minimise your negative environmental output as it can significantly decrease the amount of energy that is wasted powering individual on-premise servers for individuals’ businesses.
What’s great too, is that a lot of these shared data centres are scalable, meaning that the number of servers you need can fluctuate to meet the demands of your business, particularly for those companies that see seasonal spikes in demand.
How can the Cloud and DCS Help you?
It’s clear that the cloud is a great starting point for companies who are trying to lessen their environmental impact. From reducing physical waste, energy and using renewable energy sources, the cloud will help you to become more environmentally friendly in an abundance of ways. Even better, the cloud is also highly practical to support the daily operations of a business too.
At DCS, we offer an array of cloud solutions to support your business needs. If you’d like to speak to us about how our cloud services can better support your business in becoming environmentally conscious, or any of our other cloud services we offer contact us here, or give us a call on 01937541411.