Reducing energy consumption is a massive part of making your organization greener. One of the main culprits of your organization’s energy consumption is servers. Not only do servers themselves need a tremendous amount of electricity to operate, but their ancillary equipment also requires a lot of energy to work. Cooling systems, monitors, humidifiers, light—that’s all part of it.
Servers for small to midsize businesses may be multifunctional with their storage, but often larger organizations have individual servers per task, like one server solely dedicated to email. This is a necessary and common practice that organizations rely on to ensure critical business operations are uninterrupted. Ultimately, it consumes more energy to power these dedicated servers, but organizations now have more options regarding how they track their energy consumption.
The power of monitoring
Many organizations today use monitoring software to manage their servers. In many cases, this software is installed on the server and will open a log file every time the server’s performance changes on a given metric.
Customers can access this data at any time, which means that organizations and businesses can also access their own monitoring software to determine how much energy and money they’re using. This is a great way to get some insight into where you might be able to make changes that will reduce your energy consumption.
Knowing how much electricity you’re using is a great starting point for reducing your organization’s overall consumption. Beyond that, you need a plan around what you can do to reduce the number of resources needed by your server(s).
Incentives for greener business processes
The United States recently introduced incentives that encourage businesses to prioritize sustainability. There are several different incentives which include tax credits, rebates, and even zero-interest loans. Several states offer these programs, so it’s worth checking out what your local government can provide. The incentives aren’t just for businesses, either—there is financial help for homeowners as well.
Once you know if you qualify, you can plan how your business can reduce its carbon footprint. Your company can make the most of these opportunities with relevant information about which systems or equipment will save you money and provide a good return on investment (ROI).
AWS supports sustainability efforts
If you’re looking for an organization to support your business’ sustainability efforts, you should pick one that not only talks the talk, but also walks the walk. By 2025, Amazon Web Services (AWS) says it will power its daily business operations with 100% renewable energy. This carbon-neutral 2025 goal was originally set back in 2014, illustrating that sustainability has been a long-term priority for AWS.
AWS’ internal commitment to sustainability is commendable. In addition to internal efforts, AWS’ cloud platform helps other organizations reduce their carbon footprint. AWS is more sustainable than traditional servers when it comes to data processing. For starters:
1) AWS uses 60% more renewable energy than the average company, which uses 12%.
2) AWS data centers are more energy efficient and use less power.
3) AWS uses newer servers, eliminating the problems you might face with older models, ultimately saving energy output in the process.
4) AWS doesn’t start and stop its servers like other companies might, but instead keep servers running continuously and therefore reducing energy consumption.
AWS clients run the gamut from small brick-and-mortar businesses to international conglomerates, government agencies, and just about everything in between. Some of their high-profile clients include Airbnb, Capital One, Comcast, Dow Jones, the European Space Agency, Harvard Medical School, McDonalds, Netflix, Pfizer, Pinterest, the U.S. Department of State, Yelp, and Zillow.
How ReluTech can help reduce your company’s carbon footprint
ReluTech’s partnership with AWS enables organizations to reduce their overall carbon footprint. ReluTech’s unique services and solutions are inherently sustainable; third-party maintenance and used hardware rentals keep your older equipment running for longer, saving you from expensive equipment refreshes and reducing the amount of equipment your organization uses.
Whether you’re pursuing carbon neutral status, aspiring to be net-zero, or even just looking to cut down on waste, ReluTech simplifies the way companies transition off on-prem servers and onto cloud platforms like AWS (Amazon Web Services), which is more sustainable than traditional servers.
Through maintenance solutions, infrastructure solutions, asset disposition solutions, and cloud migration services, ReluTech has already saved thousands of customers over $17,000,000. ReluTech’s clients have repurposed and reinvested these savings to other altruistic causes, paying it forward for others and the Earth. A win-win across the board.
Data center divest program
Through our comprehensive Data Center Divest Program, ReluTech provides invaluable insight into your on-prem hardware. ReluTech works with its customers to address data center challenges and create a roadmap customers can act on with confidence that both their financial and sustainability goals can be reached.
Customer-owned data centers have the chance to mitigate early colo-contract termination and other costs associated with it where possible. Based on the timing of the workload and data center exit, ReluTech leverages the AWS partner ecosystem to plan and optimize compute, storage, and networking costs for support, refresh, decommissioning, and divestiture. These services can directly decrease the need to procure new hardware and reduce unnecessary e-waste.
The IT Divest Program enables customers to accelerate their migration to AWS by unlocking the value of their existing equipment which they can then apply towards migration costs and thus save money while also saving big on energy costs. By providing flexible contracts for the leaseback of cloud-committed hardware, ReluTech helps customers avoid OEM lock-in with existing contracts for equipment in the data center.
Take away
Sustainability is becoming more of differentiator in this new decade. When your company is compared to your competitor, do you measure up to their sustainability efforts? It may be the difference between landing the deal with a new customer or being left in the proverbial dust. Whatever your motivation is, becoming more aligned with sustainability efforts can only help your business develop in the right direction, whether for financial purposes, a sense of responsibility to reduce your carbon footprint, or both.