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Home Business Creating and maintaining sustainable IT infrastructure

Creating and maintaining sustainable IT infrastructure

by Uma
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Creating and maintaining sustainable IT infrastructure

Spokesperson – Jeremy Isaacs, Sales Specialist Director – IT Infrastructure, Ricoh UK 

 

Jeremy Isaacs, Head of IT Infrastructure Sales Specialist Practice at Ricoh UK, explores the reasons why businesses need to invest in efficient and sustainable cloud and IT infrastructure. He highlights the key benefits such investment has on reducing overall costs, lowering a company’s carbon footprint, and its impact on ROI. 

With energy costs seemingly increasing every day and placing financial strain on businesses across the UK, important questions are being raised on where business leaders can and should make investments to secure long-term success and meet sustainability goals.

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Inefficiencies are a key factor in success and failure, and it’s no different when it comes to meeting sustainability goals. The implications of dated infrastructures are felt in both the bottom-line financial statements and environmentally, which means investing in updating legacy software and hardware must be a priority.

IT leaders investing in efficient and modern IT infrastructure, such as cloud technologies, can not only reduce energy consumption but can promote long-term cost savings and directly contribute to profit margins and growth.

Moving away from data centres 

Both the public and private sectors are acutely aware of the harmful effects of carbon emissions, and this understanding has rightly led to the implementation of stricter environmental guidelines and regulations. An important example of these regulations includes the 2021 Cabinet Office announcement that all companies bidding for government contracts over £5 million must commit to being carbon neutral by 2050. 

The rules of engagement are changing, and regulations are placing extra pressure on organisations to step up to the plate – green credentials are no longer a ‘nice to have’ but a requirement by law and an expectation of the consumer.

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As businesses look to meet these requirements, they are turning their attention to actionable fixes. One of the biggest emitters for many larger organisations is data centres. Recent figures suggest that an incredible 25% of non-industrial companies’ carbon footprint is a direct result of data centre consumption. Perhaps more shockingly, estimates from Ricoh partner NetApp, suggest 68% of data stored is never again used after its creation. 

In 2023, 60% of European organisations are set to prioritise digital investments to help reach sustainability-related goals. Whether on-premises or in the cloud, the data centre is a large consumer of power and carries with it cost and carbon implications. 

Not only do data centres eat up a tremendous amount of expensive floor space, but they also cost a significant amount of money to maintain and require an incredible amount of energy to run. A mid-size organisation can, in some instances, expect to shell out an additional £1 million over the next 5 years to fund the rise in their data centre energy bills. As such, organisations need to find a more energy and cost-efficient alternative.

Being good is good for business

Increasing energy costs, the implementation of regulations, organisational ambition to have a positive contribution to society and the environment, along with the need to stay relevant boil down to a simple fact: Being good is good for business.

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For organisational sustainability and growth, it is vital work is done to re-design infrastructure with environmental sustainability at the very top of the agenda, with the benefits twofold: the first is a reduction in carbon footprints and the second is a reduction in your energy bills.

Knowing where to start can feel tough but transforming existing infrastructure and identifying the right cloud solutions begins with a simple four-step approach. 

  1.  Evaluate existing infrastructure and measure your power usage and carbon footprint
  2.  Once this is identified, you can then look at how to optimise current resources
  3.  Transform systems 
  4. Where suitable, you can also repurpose assets

As a result, this will reduce power, maximise performance and has the potential to drive a return on investment in 12 months. 

Increased use of devices and data 

While shrinking the size of IT systems may seem like a ‘quick fix’ to reducing energy use, it’s often impractical when looking at the growing digital landscape. 

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Regardless of the size of the business, all organisations employ a huge number of electronic devices which they rely on to run their business and it’s only like to increase. To accommodate this, companies must invest in sustainable cloud and infrastructure strategies which boost capacity while reducing energy consumption. 

Ultimately, if a business’s IT infrastructure can’t keep up with the rising use of devices and data, they run a real risk of system crashes and loss of access to data which could be harmful to the wider business objectives.

Cloud in an agile world 

Finally, transforming your existing infrastructure has several benefits for hybrid and agile working, as it enables organisations to use and handle data outside of office networks – meaning employees have access to work regardless of their primary location. 

Rather than investing in additional office server space, hardware and other resources needed for in-office work, cost efficiencies can be gained by investing in streamlined cloud and infrastructure strategies that enable successful and collaborative remote and hybrid working. 

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Cloud storage offers scalability, with storage capacity increasing or decreasing based on the requirements of the business at any time. This can all be achieved without the need for investing in additional hardware or infrastructure.

As we look to the future, the picture is clear – investment in effective and agile cloud technologies rather than data centres will reduce costs and minimise negative impacts on the environment. Long-term business success and sustainability will not be possible without the other. 

 

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