Ten ways to go Green
It makes good business sense to adopt a green approach. Environmentally-
sustainable IT and business practices will help to reduce carbon emissions – all of this is great for the environment. But did you realise that getting your business to go green will also help to cut your costs in numerous ways? And it’ll attract more customers and business partners, many of whom are looking for suppliers who have green credentials.
Here are ten ways your business can reduce its carbon emissions while using IT.
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- Monitor your power usage
The first step in reducing your carbon emissions is knowing how much power your organisation uses 24/7. Monitoring your power usage with power consumption meters, or in collaboration with your power supplier can all help you draw up a strategy to reduce it.
It’s useful to know that many energy providers now have an option for using ‘green power’ generated from bio-fuels, windmills, hydroelectric, photovoltaic panels, or nuclear sources.
- Replace your phone system with a UC system
Moving from a traditional phone system to a Unified Communication (UC) system, can help you slash your phone bill, as calls are carried over the Internet as data. It can also facilitate more remote and home working and this can cut down on travel which carries both a carbon and financial cost.
- Move your IT systems to the Cloud
You can cut your IT and energy costs by moving your IT systems to the Cloud, which means using the services of an Internet or private network service provider. They’ll probably have the economies of scale to run multiple applications for clients like you in an energy-efficient way, they’re likely to have invested in green data centre technology.
- Replace meetings with video-conferencing
Many forward-thinking companies have reduced the amount of travel their employees need to do by replacing meetings – particularly international ones – with tele-conferencing and tele-prescence. Another good tip is to use simple collaborative software to enable remote users to work together on standard applications.
- Reduce your server count
Virtualisation technology will enable your organisation to reduce the number of power-hungry servers it runs with a smaller number of server boxes running multiple applications. There are many commercial and open-source virtualisation applications available. In addition to this, processor makers have also built support into their chips to help run the software.
- Allow homeworking
Allow your staff to work from home and your business would reduce its heating, lighting and power costs. And by enabling your employees to eliminate their commute, they’ll further reduce their carbon footprint.
- Enable hot-desking
Wireless and IP-based networking technology can facilitate hot-desking. Your staff then have the option to sit at any desk and connect to your company’s network by plugging in directly, or picking up a wireless signal. The advantage of this is that companies can operate from smaller premises, and reduce operational and energy costs.
- Replace your servers with efficient blade-based systems
Traditional server hardware tends to be more energy-hungry than server blade-based systems. Server blade-based systems take up less space in the server room, require less cooling and less power to run.
- Replace your old PCs with thin-clients
This desktop strategy, also called server-based computing, can help lower your operational IT costs. Low-cost PCs and thin clients running desktop virtualisation software, draw less power than traditional PCs.
Choosing green computing products that feature advanced power management will also help to lower your carbon footprint. And by safely recycling PC equipment, you can keep harmful materials such as lead, hexavalent chromium and mercury out of landfill sites. Donating obsolete, but still functional systems to charities can also be a mutually beneficial option.
- Switch off at night
It’s good practice to configure your machines to power down at night and at the weekend. There are many solutions available to do this. Modern operating systems can be set so that systems hibernate when not in use, but can be woken up for configuration and update.
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