How to cut energy costs and optimize your servers with sustainable solutions

You don’t want your business to simply survive; you want it to thrive. Today, it’s hard to do either. Troubling factors are rising as profits are falling: geopolitical turmoil, material costs, energy prices, interest rates, not to mention a skilled labor shortage. Unfortunately, in the face of certain problems, businesses can only be reactive. However, in the face of our biggest trouble—climate change—being proactive could save the planet.

Despite popular belief, practicing sustainability doesn’t have to mean practicing less profitable business. In fact, there are several reasons to introduce green initiatives that benefit both Mother Earth and your margins.

What is sustainability?

Sustainability concerns meeting the urgent needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own.

When a company integrates sustainability into their strategic plan, they are gaining a better understanding of what challenges may lie ahead and which resources are expected to be hit hard with price increases. Energy costs are a particularly relevant example, and many organizations are currently kicking themselves, wishing they’d better invested to reduce these costs.

What are the technological challenges?

To begin the journey toward a more sustainable data center, leaders must first recognize their direct impact on the environment. Every business deploys technology; therefore, every business is invested in solving one of the biggest challenges facing the world today: data center technology.

Data centers and server technology are responsible for a significant percentage of our planet’s energy consumption and subsequent carbon footprint:

• In 2023, 97 million new users came online for the first time, adding to the already substantial energy surge of previous years.
• In a typical data center, servers can consume between 50% to 70% of the total power.

The heat produced by the hardware alone can be staggeringly excessive. Time may be money, but so is energy. An opportunity to save both would be well worth taking.

What are the benefits for your bottom line?

Industry pundits conclude that deploying a sustainability strategy can positively impact the profits of every business, reducing costs substantially and significantly affecting operating profits.

It can pay to focus on lower energy consumption, carbon emissions, and water intake too. Start by replacing any outdated, inefficient equipment or by reducing waste through the reuse of resources instead of purchasing them new. In this way, organizations can save money while also enhancing their brand image, showing their employees, customers, and shareholders that they care about the greater good. Achieving net zero and mitigating climate change is increasingly important to customers and can even influence who they’re willing to purchase from. What’s more, many investors now place sustainability at the core of their investment strategy, which means more financial opportunities for businesses with a sustainability plan.

Operating sustainably can also increase your organization’s resilience. A realistic sustainability policy will help to protect your business from tighter future regulations while also complementing business compliance requirements such as Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR).

What steps can you take?

The development and implementation of a sustainability policy is a revolutionary opportunity to engage your internal and external stakeholders and drive up profitability. Fortunately, SHI is here to help you meet or set your greener goals. Our proven tools and technology — like these managed services solutions – can help businesses reduce operating costs, improve governance, and optimize IT assets. We use industry knowledge, leading research, and extensive reporting to recommend projects and actions designed to improve data center efficiency and optimize server estate performance, saving customers in terms of energy, carbon, and cost.

Sustainability and profitability are as linked as humanity’s fate is to Earth’s. Climate change isn’t waiting, so why should you? Align your business strategy to sustainability targets and reap the monetary rewards today.