Our environment is facing a crisis. The industrial revolution of the 20^th century has contributed to a massive rise in greenhouse gases which is leading to climate change. Moreover, mountains of plastics, and other waste, is ending up in landfill or worse, in our beautiful oceans. It is our responsibility to safeguard our planet for future generations and global consumers have now started to demand action. 

Recently, many corporations have publicly committing to making environmental policy a central part of business considerations. For example, Microsoft & AstraZeneca have declared that they will be “Carbon Negative” by 2030 and by 2050, Microsoft aims to have removed as much carbon as it has generated in its 45-year history. 

Today, responsible organizations are proactively identifying new methods of reducing their carbon footprints and supporting environmentally friendly initiatives. This includes assessing the ecological impact of employed technology, as well as energy consumption and product disposal/recycling.  

One of the most effective and easiest methods of reducing an organization’s ecological impact is by migrating appropriate workloads to the Cloud. Indeed, using Cloud-based Xensam SAM software can generate even greater environmental benefits for your business and help meet environmental objectives. 

Switching from On-Premise to the Cloud 

According to a study conducted by the NRDC (https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/data-center-efficiency-assessment-IP.pdf), US Data Centers alone are expected to generate more than 150 million metric tons of Carbon Pollution in 2020. This is a staggering amount, but businesses have the opportunity to drive this figure down by diverting on-premise software applications to Cloud services such as AWS or Microsoft Azure.  

As an example of how effective transitioning to the Cloud can be, WSP was commissioned by Salesforce.com to determine the environmental impact of using Cloud technology rather than on-premise deployments.  https://www.salesforce.com/content/dam/web/en_us/www/assets/pdf/datasheets/sustainability-wp-wsp-salesforce-environment.pdf 

It found that transacting an equivalent workload with Salesforce.com was up to 95% more carbon-efficient than an on-premise application. It was 64% more carbon-efficient than applications deployed in a private data center.

The reason for such dramatic reductions in carbon emissions is that purpose-built, energy efficient data centers are usually able to manage their capacity much better than private data centers – with private environments, typically only 15% to 20% of the server’s resources are used, whilst the business model of Cloud platforms ensure that resources are employed close to capacity.

Furthermore, Cloud data centers tend to use renewable energy and in the case of Xensam, our partner data centers (Volta) use “Row-Based” cooling systems that use 42% less Fan power than standard CRAC data center cooling systems, using much less power as a result.

Oskar Fösker, Xensam CEO, considers Cloud technology one of the most powerful methods of reducing any organization’s IT carbon footprint. 

“We estimate that moving business workloads to the Cloud is up to 80% more effective for reducing carbon emissions and we have selected our global Data Centers with environmental factors and sustainability at the center of our considerations. This includes responsible recycling of equipment to restrict material waste. Using Cloud technology shouldn’t be an option any longer, it should be the standard” says Oskar Fösker. 

“And of course, Xensam is designed for simple, fast deployment, which means that external consultants or onsite installation teams will not be required, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by negating the need to make endless journeys.” 

It is also of vital importance that Xensam takes the lead in environmental endeavors, which is why we are invested in a program of waste recycling and that energy for the offices is obtained from entirely renewable sources. Whilst Xensam is a global business, part of the environmental policy is to restrict physical travel in favor of web meetings, which further reduces Xensam’s carbon footprint.

Xensam is taking its responsibility to improve our environment very seriously. Please email info@xensam.com to learn more about what we’re doing to protect the planet.