Enabling sustainability through IT

Around the world, data centres consume a staggering 200 terawatt hours of energy each year, producing an estimated 2 per cent of all global CO2 emissions. The figure is even higher in Singapore, with data centres taking up to 7 per cent of all power consumed in the small island state.

And as digital systems permeate every façade of our lives and the pace of digitalisation continues to accelerate, the amount of power consumed by data centres will only keep growing.

The importance of sustainability

Given the daunting energy consumption of data centres, is there anything that individual organisations can do to be more sustainable? And should they? Well, it turns out that there is a strong correlation between sustainability and tangible business benefits, according to researchers at Capgemini.

Indeed, as many as six in 10 organisations say they experienced an increase in revenue from their efforts to be more sustainable. Specifically, four out of five executives (80 per cent) point to increased customer loyalty as a key benefit of their sustainability initiatives.

One key argument for going to the cloud is its better energy efficiency due to the bigger economies of scale that public cloud platforms enjoy. Moreover, the top public cloud providers are also greener than a typical private cloud deployment, thanks to an aggressive and sustained push to acquire and develop sustainable energy sources for cloud operations.

Yet the public cloud is not suited for every organisation. Due to legacy hardware or performance and regulatory considerations, a private deployment might well be the only viable option in some situations. In such scenarios, the onus is on enterprises to optimise their IT infrastructure to be more sustainable.

Meet your on-premises sustainability goals

One strategy when deploying an on-premises infrastructure is to turn to edge computing. By housing data and processing capabilities at the edge, businesses benefit from better performance while reducing energy consumption due to the reduced amount of data traversing the network - which translates to a lower carbon footprint.

In addition, organisations looking to set up a new deployment can make sure that the IT equipment they purchase is not manufactured in a way that adversely affects the environment. They can achieve this by purchasing products designed with their whole-of-life consumption in mind.

One approach is to embrace a circular economy, a model of production and consumption where products and materials are reused, refurbished and recycled for as long as possible. Businesses can contribute towards it by purchasing products that are repairable and upgradeable, and from a provider that will dispose of the product properly.

One example of a product that adheres to the principle of the circular economy is the Smart-UPS Online from Schneider Electric. The lithium-ion batteries and UPS units are part of the company's Worldwide Takeback Program and will be taken back by Schneider Electric to recycle or reuse after they have achieved their end-of-life.

In addition, Schneider Electric is also helping organisations to keep PUE of on-premise data centres to an optimal level, preferably 1.3 and below in Singapore.