Making the business case for sustainability

There is a hard truth about the environmental footprint of IT: while, by its very nature, IT seems non-material it can be an enormous consumer of resources, including energy. After all, bits may be infinitely replicable, but replicating those bits is the work of atoms. Whether it is the complex life cycle of server and switch equipment or the energy generated to power them, IT consumes a lot more than people think.

Typically, when it comes to measuring the environmental impacts of IT, processing and storage are the big costs.

Ashleigh Connors, sustainable IT consultant at TEKenable, said that the environmental footprint of an organisation’s IT estate will depend very much on the nature and size of the organisation.

“It depends on the way you look at it. Specifically, if we’re looking at cloud, it depends greatly on the size of the organisation, and on the complexity of the organisation,” she said.

Moving away from on-premise IT to the cloud is an obvious first step to take for many businesses on a journey to sustainability as the virtualised nature of cloud computing means servers are not left running idle. But what about the cost of transitioning?

“If you consider the costs of not transitioning, I would consider those greater than the cost of transitioning. They may face problems with regulatory compliance and not be able to meet those demands.

“In terms of on-prem versus cloud, cloud could easily be more efficient,” she said.

There are other benefits, too, including to business continuity, Connors said, as the co-location and data centres where cloud computing runs are fully protected and have redundant power supplies.

“These data centres, they never really have an outage,” she said.

“If you have on-prem, you have to think about backup electricity and that comes with an increased cost. That management and maintenance has a cost.”

Environmental, social and governance

Today, the push to so-called ESG, or environmental social and governance, in business and the public sector is hard to ignore. Demands from government, lobby groups, investors and even the public are on the rise, and recent debate about data centres has demonstrated that IT is no longer getting a free pass.

But what can companies do to improve their ESG ratings, and why should they do it?

“There are a number of driving factors for companies to adapt to ESG regulatory demands, including the way that capital is being invested where there’s a snowball effect, with more and more companies expecting their supplier to show the ESG metrics,” she said.

Committing to proving ESG data for investors and customers cannot be done on an ad hoc basis, however. Hard data is called for, and this means that businesses need to have a global view of their IT estate and its energy consumption. From there, a business can assess which, if any, systems are no longer required as well as look at more efficient potential paths forward.

“If it’s not measured, it’s not managed. The first thing an organisation can do if they are on a green transition journey is to take stock and see what they are running and why,” she said.

The big question hanging over all discussion of sustainability and IT is should companies aim for net zero in terms of IT estate? Connors said yes, as it is becoming standard practice to aim for it, in IT as in other areas of the business. That does not mean it will be easy, however.

“Companies should strive for net zero [in IT], the same way they would do for other areas. For companies that aren’t that far down the road with their ESG journey it may seem unachievable,” she said.

However, despite seeming difficult, it is an achievable goal, she said.

“They need to assess where they currently are, to get empirical data and that will then allow them to see what can be done and where savings can be made,” she said.