Away from on-premise, towards sustainability
Efficiency and connectivity benefits aside, moving from on-premise servers to the cloud has a host of sustainability benefits, says Aaron Naisbitt of CTS.
In late 2022, CTS hosted a series of roundtables with law firm leaders, who all agreed that there has been a shift in the function of law firms, as they become more guided by a moral compass than business opportunity.
The importance of cloud technology has become glaringly obvious over the past few years. But alongside the technological and financial benefits we’ve all heard about over and over again, there are many environmental benefits that you should take advantage of when it comes to your obligation to act on sustainability.
Reduce energy use
Energy consumption is becoming an increasingly bigger concern to business leaders due to a continuing rise in costs. Servers require a lot of power to remain operational, from a constant power supply to cooling systems to avoid overheating, which can be particularly expensive for firms whose servers are on-premise.
By shifting from on-premise to a cloud model, your firm could cut IT-related energy usage by up to a whopping 87%, with the energy saved reportedly being able to power the whole of Los Angeles for one whole year, according to a Google-funded survey.
Leverage datacentre efficiency
Research shows that although there was an increase of 550% in cloud computing between 2010 and 2018, the amount of energy used by datacentres only increased by 6%.
Datacentres are specifically built for purpose and many cloud providers have measures put in place to ensure that their datacentres are sustainable and environmentally friendly. For example, Microsoft Azure has been carbon neutral since 2012, and has committed to focus on four key areas of environmental impact – carbon, water, waste and ecosystems.
Decrease greenhouse gas emissions
On-premise hardware emits large and continuous amounts of greenhouse gases throughout its lifecycle, which includes the processes of:
- Producing materials for the equipment
- Assembling the equipment
- Transporting the equipment on-site
- Using the equipment
- Disposing off the equipment when it reaches end-of-life
By migrating to the cloud, large companies can lessen per-user carbon footprint by 30% and up to a huge 90% for small enterprises.
Move towards dematerialisation
When we speak about ‘dematerialisation’, we mean the substitution of high-carbon, resource-heavy physical products, such as on-premise equipment and hardware with cloud-based digital services and products. Migrating to the cloud means that you can eliminate certain hardware, which reduces energy use and carbon footprint.
Dematerialisation can also support your legal practice with its ‘paperless’ journey to cut down on stationery and storage. As much as 3% of a company’s revenue is spent on paper, printing, filing, storing and maintaining files of information, so by ditching physical documents, you can save not only money but time and space.
There is no challenge more significant or urgent than embracing a more sustainable way of life and business, and the legal sector can do its part by going green and embracing the cloud.
