Sustainability and technology: how can the cloud benefit the environment?

Integrating sustainability and technology has become a necessity in companies over the years. Currently, there is a great debate about how technological advances can favor the environment. An example of this discussion is the data center . Large companies and IT professionals who operate with this type of storage know that the costs to maintain this environment can be high, since it is necessary to keep it active 24 hours a day with cooling.

According to data from a study carried out by the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory , between 2000 and 2005, when the cloud was not yet so well known, the expense of electricity by data centers increased by around 90%. In the next five years, from 2005 to 2010, progress dropped to 24%. Until 2014, the demand for the service rose only 4%. However, everything changed with the popularization of cloud computing , as companies of all sizes were introduced to the possibility of reducing their energy consumption and, consequently, carbon emissions, which allowed them to move towards a more sustainable future.

In addition to all the advantages and benefits generated by migrating to the cloud, researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in partnership with Google found, in a study conducted over six months, that if they changed the software used by 86 million US workers to the cloud could save enough energy to power the city of Los Angeles, California, for a year.

Another finding that the cloud can favor the environment was revealed by a survey carried out by Accenture , which pointed out that cloud migration and management can reduce CO2 emissions by almost 60 million tons per year. This reduction is allowed from a multitenancy (term used in SaaS platforms, that is, shared tenancy in public cloud providers), in which large environments are able to serve millions of users in different companies simultaneously in a huge shared infrastructure . In addition to the use of servers that can perform higher workloads through smaller infrastructures and the efficiency in data centers, the energy expenditure is significantly lower.

Sky.One and social responsibility

Environmental concerns are completely in line with the reality of business and the cloud . Using fewer servers and making the best use of their power is just as important to reducing the carbon footprint of a company's data center as using different power sources. In this context, companies are increasingly diving into issues relevant to the future of the population and the planet. Maintaining transparency and reliability with its public and society can ensure the survival of companies and even their prosperity in the coming years. This is what David Jones, Global CEO of the Havas Group, discusses in the book “Empresas Que Cuidam Prosperam”, from 2012.

Thinking about this and the National Environment Week, which took place between June 1 and 5, 2021, Sky.One planned virtual meetings with employees to further reinforce the importance of composting and the measures that will be taken together with the business environmental “ Planta Feliz Adubo ” for a more effective selection and collection.

Still in partnership with the project, together with Oeko Bioplásticos , we support the Composting Week, an action to reinforce that it is possible to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills, transforming it into fertilizer, thus closing the complete cycle. At the Sky.One , plastic cups and containers are no longer used and all SkyOwners have personalized mugs. In addition, the selective collection of waste generated is carried out regularly and there is the possibility of including collection and selection of waste for composting.

Aiming for a future with greater integration between sustainability and technology, the intention is that this awareness be part of Sky.One 's internal culture so that our employees can apply these habits as an example to be followed. The aim is to invest in initiatives that encourage more sustainable and ecological attitudes, in order to take the expansion of environmental culture as a constant process from the inside out.