How the right infrastructure solution can support your sustainability goals

With regions across the world confronting record-high temperatures this past summer, the call to action on climate change has never been greater. According to the United Nations’ latest climate report global temperature increases will surpass the danger threshold of 1.5°C unless efforts are made to significantly reduce carbon emissions across all sectors.

Sustainability has long been a focus for businesses in every industry, including tech. Many have stepped up efforts, for example, pledging to reduce their carbon footprint and adopting more renewable energy sources. But these actions aren’t enough, and the quest for more energy-efficient innovation must be at the top of every company’s agenda.

The IT sector is in a particularly unique position to address this challenge, being both a problem as well as a solution. The sector is a major consumer of the world’s energy resources, as well as the provider of the technology that helps deliver sustainable solutions, notably cloud.

Cloud as the eco-friendly solution

From reducing IT costs to increasing agility, the business case for cloud is well understood. But migrating to the cloud can also be better for the planet.

Companies that manage their own infrastructure need extensive hardware and large facilities with perpetual power supply and cooling systems to keep their hardware running. Shifting from on-premise to the cloud enables organizations to consume fewer resources, including energy.

A 2020 Accenture analysis found that infrastructure as a service (IaaS) migrations can lead to a 65 percent reduction in energy usage and 84 percent reduction in carbon emissions.

This favorable shift calls on data center operators to find new ways to enhance their efficiency for the future.

The path to greener data centers

Traditional data centers -- by design -- haven’t lent themselves to being green. They require massive amounts of space, equipment, and power. It is estimated that data centers will account for a third of the "information and communications technology" sector’s global energy consumption by 2025.

Early last year, a number of cloud and data center operators across Europe signed the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact, which has a core commitment to become carbon neutral by 2030. Initiatives include the use of 100 percent renewable energy, improving water efficiency, reusing waste heat, and creating a circular economy to repair and recycle servers.

Here are three measures IaaS providers are taking to improve operational efficiency:

1. Retire Legacy Equipment -- Legacy hardware usually requires more energy to remain operational as it ages. With equipment manufacturers producing more energy-efficient technologies that perform more effectively over their lifespan, operators are renewing their infrastructure as a matter of priority.

2. Increase virtualization -- By enabling multiple pieces of software to run on the same server and multiple servers to be combined into one, virtualization lowers the environmental impact of customers using the facility.It can also diminish the need to accommodate employees on-site, allowing data centers to operate with a reduced energy footprint at higher temperatures.

3. Use power on demand -- Data centers are reducing their power consumption by switching to an on-demand energy model, which can be optimized with continuous monitoring and analysis.Tools are also available to help data centers reclaim unused power and distribute it elsewhere in the facility, helping lessen their reliance on power generation even more.

Embracing the need for change

Everyone is looking for ways to tackle the climate crisis, and the tech sector has an opportunity to lead the charge. Infrastructure providers are having to rethink how they operate in order to meet the needs of customers, while also protecting the planet. The good news is that both can be done.

Concerted efforts to deliver services responsibly and efficiently will not only be an advantage for green data center operators but also lead to a more sustainable future for all.

Photo Credit: inxti /Shutterstock

Bart Dries is Senior Operations Director, Leaseweb USA.