- Public pressure is beginning to mount for all companies to operate more greenly.
- Operational costs of running your business often include unchecked power consumption.
- Significant cost and carbon savings can be made through IT realignments, big and small.
People Expect Green Companies — Become One by Reducing Your Carbon Footprint
Every year, more and more people expect companies to use less carbon-based power. The good news is that renewable energy sources are becoming more viable. The really good news is that when it comes to your IT, there’s a lot you can do that not only reduces your carbon footprint — delivering all the reputational advantages that come with that — but also reduces your actual spending.
Cut the IT Waste
If you’ve been in business for a while, you’ve accumulated some significant waste that lingers on and increases your IT carbon footprint. Servers may be running that could be consolidated — or just turned off. Old workstations may inefficiently consume power. Even if all this outdated equipment is unplugged, it’s still taking up the physical space that you’re paying for.
Do a full audit of your equipment, identify what you don’t need, and then recycle it — so you’re fully minimizing your carbon footprint.
Virtualization
Why house physical servers when you can run them virtually? A data centre in your company means rows of machines consuming power and producing waste heat, taking up space that you have to maintain and manage the heat for.
These machines and everything it takes to manufacture and distribute them don’t necessarily have to exist. Through platforms like Microsoft Azure, you can get a flexible, on-demand, virtualized data center, taking the maintenance out of your hands and allowing for carbon footprint reduction through the massive economies of scale Microsoft is able to leverage.
Video Conferencing
It’s still common for companies to routinely send people across the planet to attend meetings in person. There may be occasions where there truly is no substitute for a face-to-face — but there are far more times when everything can actually be done via video conference.
The benefits are obvious. You’re not paying for flights and accommodations — and you’ve removed that flight from your carbon footprint. You’re also not inconveniencing your employee, and they’re able to seamlessly slip from the video conference meeting back to their high-value work rather than be interrupted by travel.
Remote Work
Similarly, many offices might find that remote work can drastically cut down on their operational overhead. With an internet connection and modern tools like Microsoft 365, your employees can sometimes work just as efficiently at home as they can in the office.
With this, you don’t need to pay for and support such a large physical space, which saves you rent, heating, and many other associated costs. It also means your employee doesn’t have to commute. One fewer car on the road? It’s a carbon footprint reduction.
The Paperless Office
It was long a frustration that the promise of the IT age rarely became realized: a completely paperless office. For many companies, paper is still routinely printed on, passed around, filed, mailed, and so on. Certainly, the realities of doing business with partners that insist on paper can hold you back, and some internal processes can resist doing away with paper. But at the same time, it’s not an all-or-nothing question.
Get a good document management system in place, and you’ll find many ways to cut down on paper — while benefiting from better organization and more secure and collaborative access. An entire building full of filing cabinets could be reduced to nothing but your internet connection to a major data storage service. In terms of your reduced carbon footprint, that’s less space you’re responsible for, less heating, less manufacturing and distribution — and more convenience and effectiveness to boot.
Ready to Green Your IT?
As Microsoft Gold Partners, we at CrucialLogics are experts in everything from data storage to mass deployments of the latest technologies. Whether your priority is greening your IT, increasing your efficiency, or just straight cost-savings, we can show you how all can go hand-in-hand when readying your company to succeed through technology.
