Implementing eco-friendly and sustainable practices into the corporate world was always considered a “feel good” endeavor. Now, committing to sustainability is a necessity. Global organizations are raising the bar for vendors to report on and comply with Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) standards, which include updating operations to be more sustainable and environmentally conscious. It also means increasing the quality of sustainability reporting by global companies and their vendors. Organizations and firms are increasingly looking towards digital technology to decrease their carbon footprint and help them reach sustainability milestones.
For tech companies like Brillio, sustainability goes beyond replacing software or updating an existing IT department. It requires a full-scale evaluation of an organization’s impact and policies, current operations, including infrastructure, software and architecture, data, and usage behavior to find new ways of reducing waste while making each step more efficient and user-friendly. It also means comprehending the company’s core business philosophies to ensure that any solution is carefully tailored to their specific requirements. Brillio’s CTO, Chander Damodaran, specializes in these end-to-end technology solutions. “Technology is a critical enabler of reaching sustainable goals but must be combined with enterprise architecture principles to drive holistic view of an organization’s alignment to sustainability,” he says.
Building Blocks of Sustainable Technologies
Implementing digital technologies to further sustainability goals shifts the focus to energy reduction and increased efficiency across all parts of the workflow. This includes minimizing required resources and maximizing resources already provisioned. Today, most Enterprises have their IT ecosystem across a hybrid estate that combines data centers and the cloud. Given that most cloud providers support hybrid workloads and offer various options for enterprises to calibrate sustainability goals from managed offerings connected to industry-leading commercial solutions to bespoke applications.
The following are four elements that help define the impact of sustainable digital technology solutions:
- Cloud selection and landing zone:
Enterprises must carefully select the mechanisms for implementing new digital solutions. This includes the geographies or regions and the minimum infrastructure required to meet their sustainability goals. Selecting cloud-provided managed services over hosted instances offer high average utilization and sustainability optimization of the deployed hardware to the cloud environments.
- Software and architecture patterns:
Selection of the right architecture blueprints that rely on managed offerings wired with telemetry and implement patterns for maintaining high utilization of deployed resources is critical. Enterprises must understand the performance of their workload components and optimize the components that consume the most resources. They can achieve this by using more efficient software designs, monitoring workload activity, optimizing areas of code that consume the most time or resources, and using software patterns that support data access and storage patterns. Data mesh and fabric are helpful approaches to minimize data processing and storage requirements.
- Usage patterns:
Telemetries are used to monitor usage and consumption patterns which can help enterprises identify improvements to meet sustainability goals. Using technologies like digital twins enables one to model/simulate scenarios to optimize usage and, when connected to operational systems, can reconfigure systems to optimal utilization.
- Data patterns:
Data patterns help reduce the provisioned storage required to support an enterprise’s workload and resources. By understanding their data and using storage configurations that best support the business value of the data and how it’s used, enterprises can classify and organize data more efficiently.
- Development and deployment patterns:
Development and deployment patterns can increase the utilization of build environments, and the usage of service catalogs can reduce development times and optimize costs. These patterns facilitate the use of automation and infrastructure as code to bring pre-production environments and test rigs up as needed.
Impact of Sustainable Digital Technologies
Cloud technologies and services can reduce the amount of physical data storage required by a firm while reducing administrative burden and increasing productivity by making data more accessible. They reduce the need for each company to build and maintain its own IT data centers, thereby reducing non-optimal energy use. With data centers generating around 45% of emissions in the ICT sector, switching to public cloud services could significantly reduce emissions. Cloud computing also makes sharing and compiling data easier for reporting or modeling purposes. One report from the International Data Corp. (IDC), found that implementing more cloud computing technologies could prevent the emission of more than one billion metric tons of CO2 by 2024.
These technologies can be used to optimize systems like greenhouse gas emissions management software that collect, analyze, and report current emissions data and create predictive models for the future. Other use cases could include supplier applications that track vendors’ or third parties’ ESG performance or supply chain management software that tracks production and distribution to check for instances of redundancy or waste.
Some of the largest corporations in the world have already taken steps toward greater sustainability. Microsoft implemented cloud computing to empower energy efficiency and waste reduction. With serverless and open-source software, they reduced cooling processes, ventilation, and air conditioning, enabling smart energy consumption on devices to track energy consumption data. Walmart used digital transformation to eliminate waste and energy usage and control its supply chain. Using IoT sensors and shelf-scanning robots, they could track supply levels and customer behavior. They also developed remote shopping solutions like their Mobile Express Returns and QR code scanning that helped curb transportation emissions by enabling bulk deliveries.
Implementing Sustainable Digital Tech Solutions
For digital technology solutions to be sustainable, they must have longevity. Digital technology companies develop solutions based on their customers’ unique needs. There is serious demand for sustainable solutions, with 70% of corporate leaders reporting pressure from investors and other stakeholders to focus on making their operations more environmentally conscious. “Designing and implementing effective digital solutions requires understanding the organizational impact and policies and taking a holistic view of their IT ecosystem, including the applications, infrastructure, data, and usage patterns,” says Damodaran.
Obtaining customer feedback is one way digital tech companies can be better informed to develop solutions that work. Not only does it build loyalty and increase ROI, but it also ensures lasting results that won’t need to be replaced soon.
Benefits of Sustainable Technology Development
Digital solutions inherently reduce complexity and redundancy while making it easier for companies to adhere to sustainable practices and be held accountable by stakeholders and customers. Additionally, the current macroeconomic conditions have forced companies to embrace spartan measures. With climate change at the forefront of global discussions and summits, sustainable technology has a prominent role in reducing emissions, making companies nimbler and more accountable. Companies should prioritize long-lasting, eco-friendly solutions that optimize operations without compromising performance or revenue.
There are many additional benefits that companies can look forward to when implementing sustainable digital solutions. Bolstering ESG goals and sustainability attracts investors increasingly interested in firms committed to meeting environmental goals. According to a 2022 Gartner survey, 80% of CEOs cited ecological sustainability as the motivation behind investment in new or improved products for the next two years. This puts sustainability as the third most important driver of product investment after functional performance and general quality.
Nonprofits, local governments, and the public are coming together to organize solar panel development, implement greener forms of transportation, and save energy. A great example is the Smart Lighting Program in Chicago. For several years now, the city of Chicago has relied on wireless sensors to monitor and control street lighting remotely. This program allows them to track the necessary data to optimize the city’s energy use. This is just one example out of thousands of initiatives.
Three years ago, in 2020, the Boston Consulting Group conducted a survey of 300 corporate sustainability projects. They found that the top-performing 25% of these initiatives examined and re-imagined the entire architecture of the firm. They also found that all of the most successful initiatives implemented digital technologies to drive innovation and address the root causes of unsustainable practices.
Companies that implement more sustainable operations can benefit from greater employee satisfaction. Not only do digital technology solutions create more incentives for younger employees who are deeply concerned about climate change, but they also optimize workflows and reduce the administrative burden for employees. This creates a more pleasant work environment that caters to a digital and data-driven culture and improves employee retention rates.
Setting Realistic Goals
Since 1993, the number of companies reporting on sustainability has increased from 12% to 80%. This is a promising figure but doesn’t give the whole picture. Sustainability goals have a long runway and may take years before widespread implementation. It might benefit companies to take their time developing custom-made solutions that will last longer.
According to Damodaran, “Enterprises are looking for a digital transformation that is resilient, speed to value, and optimized cost to serve. Technologies like Cloud, AI, Digital Twin, and IOT are building blocks when combined with the right organizational strategies, can help an enterprise become digital native, nimbler, and sustainable.”
For more information about the intersection of digital technology and sustainability, visit www.brillio.com.
