Business Talk Summer 2014: Becoming A Greener Business

Summer

becoming a greener business

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Dean Foreman, Capital Support

Welcome... ...to your quarterly magazine Business Talk Welcome to the summer issue of Business Talk from Capital Support.

Global warming resulting from carbon emissions is increasingly being recognised as an issue that everyone needs to help address – and by doing so, reap bottom line benefits.

In this issue of Business Talk, we look at ways the IT industry – and businesses both large and small that utilise IT systems – need to play a major role to tackle this growing threat to the future of our planet.

We examine some of the measures that can be taken to cut the energy consumption (and running costs) of the IT systems we use, and look at how IT applications can also be

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utilised to reduce an organisation’s overall carbon emissions through its other activities.

Continuing our focus on cloud computing, we examine why it is set to be a key solution that will help ‘de-carbonise’ organisations as well as get some advice from ‘Green IT’ guru Mark O’Neill on how a business can put in place a sustainable IT policy.

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Please feel free to contact us if you would like to know more.

Dean Foreman Capital Support

Call 020 7458 1250 or go online at www.capitalsupport.com

becoming a greener business

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Going Green

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Green Clouds

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Meet the Expert

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Leading the way with Green IT

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Call 020 7458 1250 or go online at www.capitalsupport.com

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physical servers you require whilst also using energy-efficient hardware. Ensure also that equipment is disposed of properly according to the current WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) Directive.

Outsourcing reduces CO2 Outsourcing services and using the ‘cloud’ (see following article) will also reduce your business’s energy consumption and free up office space. Bear in mind this still has a carbon footprint ‘cost’ for the service providers so choose one with a robust environmental approach.

One recent article in the press cited the amount of CO2 produced for carrying out two Google searches as being equivalent to making a cup of tea (14 gms). Although this later proved to be an exaggeration (it’s actually 0.2 gms), it brings home the point that your carbon footprint doesn’t end with your utility and travel bills.

Remote working means reduced desk space, lighting and heating, and generally reduced power consumption, as well as saved journeys to work, further reducing your CO2 emissions. This does have to be supported with the right technology and the cloud allows you and your colleagues access to all computing functions wherever they are. This not only allows optimum home working but also, if you are on the move, you can work as if you were in the office.

Good technology means greater efficiency, and more efficiency means less energy consumed

Going greener doesn’t have to be simply a response to outside pressures... it can also lead to a more efficient business and significant cost savings

for the amount of the work produced, and therefore a smaller carbon footprint. Your IT provider can assist by implementing systems that will help with document sharing, archiving and process management to save paper and energy, as well as improving productivity.

Virtual meetings Communication is another area where technology can have a significant impact on your carbon footprint as well as bring about more efficient use of time and reduce costs.

While direct contact has its value, the transport and time savings to be made through integrated communications tools for real time video conferencing and virtual collaboration are enormous, especially if international travel is involved.

Downtime is also a contributor to carbon inefficiency. For every hour you have a system failure or lose connectivity to the internet, you are creating CO2 without any returns, not to mention losing money. This is where the measure of a good IT provider really counts, knowing that they will be on the case and have the system up and running with minimum of delay.

Going greener doesn’t have to be simply a response to outside pressures, be they regulatory or from customers who want to be seen to be using green suppliers.

With good advice from your IT provider and use of the right technology, it can also lead to a more efficient business, a greater contribution from your workforce and significant cost savings.

You also have the satisfaction that you are a responsible organisation that is doing its bit to save the planet.

Contact us to discuss how we can help your business reduce its carbon footprint and save money

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Call 020 7458 1250 or go online at www.capitalsupport.com

Call 020 7458 1250 or go online at www.capitalsupport.com

Top 10 tips for a greener business 1. Server virtualisation – latest technology reduces the number of physical servers therefore reducing power costs.

2. Remote working – enables employees to work remotely, reducing travel and cutting down on desk space with associated energy costs.

3. Outsourcing – can apply to a number of functions, e.g. remote backups which saves on equipment and power use.

4. Work faster, work better – document management systems for process management and document sharing reducing paper use.

5. The Cloud – less onsite equipment means less power and physical space required.

No hardware to upgrade and dispose of.

6. Cut the travel – tools for effective virtual meetings and collaborative working.

7. Zero downtime – when systems go down you are creating CO2 without being productive. Aim for zero downtime.

8. Power down – don’t leave monitors, printers, etc on overnight; make sure you have power saving modes on PCs. 9. Retire and recycle – get a retirement plan to replace your old systems with new energy efficient equipment. Your IT provider will help you recycle in the most beneficial way.

10. Audit – have an assessment done of your carbon use and see where you can improve.

Enhance your green credentials and save money.

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usinesses are increasingly substituting internal resources to outsourced, cloud-based services to exploit the wide range of benefits offered such as rapid capacity scale-up/scale-down, pay-as-you-go pricing and access to cloudbased applications and services, whilst also avoiding the capital costs of buying and managing on-premises infrastructure.

But we’ve heard little so far about the efficiency and green attributes of cloud computing. That is starting to change as we hear from cloud service providers about the architecture and energy requirements behind their cloud infrastructure, and as we start to analyse customer implementations of cloud resources vs. on-premises alternatives.

Cloud infrastructure addresses two critical elements of a green IT approach: energy efficiency and resource efficiency. Whether done in a private or public configuration, cloud computing will be greener for the following reasons:

Resource virtualisation Sounds mysterious, but ‘virtualisation’ is simply how cloud-based infrastructure allows a single physical server to run multiple operating system ‘images’ concurrently. As an enabler of consolidation, server virtualisation reduces the total physical server footprint, resulting in inherent green benefits.

Green clouds

Cloud computing has arrived – big time. Leading research company Forrester estimates that global spending on cloud computing services will increase from $37 billion last year to $160 billion in 2020, a 22% annual growth rate.

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Call 020 7458 1250 or go online at www.capitalsupport.com

From a resource efficiency perspective, less equipment is needed to run the same computing workloads compared to an on-premises server deployment resulting in less physical space and a reduced carbon footprint. From an energy efficiency perspective, with less physical equipment, a data centre will consume less electricity – again, reducing the carbon footprint.

As well as virtualisation, associated sophisticated server management software

Call 020 7458 1250 or go online at www.capitalsupport.com

also drives up resource and energy efficiencies by ensuring the data centre runs at peak optimisation, meaning that less physical infrastructure is needed, which in turn maximises the energy and resource efficiencies from server virtualisation.

Pay-as-you-go and self-service The pay-as-you-go nature of cloud-based infrastructure encourages users to only consume what they need and nothing more. Combined with the cloud’s selfservice capability, life-cycle management will improve since users can consume infrastructure resources only when they need it, and ‘turn off’ resources when required or with set expiration times.

“Every 100-person company using cloud-based applications can reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions by up to 90%” At the same time, the pay-as-you-go and self-service capabilities of cloud-based infrastructure drive energy and resource efficiencies simultaneously, since users only consume the computing resources they need when they need it.

Multi-tenancy Multi-tenancy allows many different organisations (public cloud) or many different business units within the same organisation (private cloud) to benefit from a common cloud-based infrastructure.

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Mark G. O’Neill

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FOR SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS PRACTICE An ISEB Foundation Guide

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GREEN IT Mark G. O’Neill

If you would like to find out more call 020 7458 1250 or go online at www.capitalsupport.com

All content copyright of Capital Support Limited 2014