Greening the office with hosted software
Bert van der Zwan explains the environmental benefits of Software-as-a-Service, and why the channel should take note
Climate change issues have been publicly bandied about over the last 20 years with little action being taken. Recently, however, they have been getting more attention and rightly so.
The Stern Review on 30 October 2006 claimed that global warming could shrink the global economy by 20 per cent. Then the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted average global temperatures to increase by as much as 6.4 degrees Celsius if carbon emissions keep rising – much higher than previously thought.
The UK Government’s draft Climate Change Bill in March 2007 set out a framework for turning the UK into a low-carbon economy. The first of its kind in any country, the bill lays out a plan for the UK to cut its carbon emissions by 26 to 32 per cent by 2020 of 1990 levels and 60 per cent by 2050.
It also gives the Government new powers to enable it to easily implement policies to cut carbon emissions.
Yet the UK will only reach its carbon emissions targets if every business and individual takes the issue of climate change seriously.
Before long, businesses could have no choice but to comply with carbon emission regulations.
Most discussion about green IT has focused on reducing the energy that devices consume through developing more efficient hardware and deploying virtualisation or power management applications.
Collaborative IT applications such as web conferencing act as an enabler, helping users work together over the internet and save carbon emissions by reducing the need for business travel.
However, one opportunity that hasn’t been explored in such depth is software-as-a-service (SaaS). Resellers coming under pressure to deliver sustainable services should look more closely at the environmental as well as business benefits it can deliver.
Goldman Sachs in December 2007 predicted that the subscription-based pricing model of SaaS will help it gain more traction.
SaaS requires no packaging, CDs or manuals, and certainly doesn’t need to be physically transported from the factory to its final destination.
And then there’s the obvious, much-discussed green selling points of energy, maintenance and accessibility.
Server utilisation rates are generally low – 10 to 15 per cent is considered the average – meaning a huge amount of electricity is wasted powering inefficient systems.
SaaS applications are off site. Running one data centre rather than hundreds of separate, under-utilised servers is a far more efficient use of power.
Although SaaS applications currently lean towards areas such as web conferencing and basic business applications like CRM, in the near future we can expect to see all kinds of business software delivered this way.
Maintenance of SaaS applications can be taken care of remotely by the vendor or reseller, slashing IT support call-outs and their associated carbon footprint.
Because the software only requires an internet connection it can be used anywhere - from home, at work, or in any Wi-Fi hotspot - and is becoming available on wireless devices such as mobile phones and BlackBerries.
Collaborative SaaS applications like web conferencing take this one step further by allowing users to meet with remote colleagues online.
As the SaaS market develops and more types of application move to the hosted model it’s likely many will be built with similar methodologies and on common architecture, making it simple for multiple business processes to be integrated and for information to be passed from one to another.
For users this means a reduced need to print information from one application to be re-entered into another. This can can also help shrink an organisation’s carbon footprint.
Undoubtedly the government will at some point introduce legislation enforcing the reduction of carbon emissions, and the opportunity will grow even further.
Bert van der Zwan is EMEA vice-president at Cisco WebEx