Sustainability
Does using paper increase your carbon footprint?
The production & transport of paper involves deforestation, high energy consumption, chemicals and the release of greenhouse gases.
Additionally, paper waste in landfills produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Therefore to reduce your carbon footprint, it makes sense to use digital alternatives, recycle, choose sustainably sourced paper, and minimise paper usage.
If an excess of paper is used in a business, it will be creating a large and unnecessary waste stream. Not only in terms of the carbon footprint, but also in terms of time management, organisation and productivity.
EDM streamlines document storage, retrieval, and sharing processes, leading to improved resource efficiency.
This efficiency extends to reduced office space requirements for paper storage and lower consumption of office supplies.
Consider the Environment
Does paper pollute?
The environmental effects of paper production include deforestation, the use of enormous amounts of energy and water as well as air pollution and waste problems. Paper accounts for around 26% of total waste at landfills.
What is the carbon footprint of one piece of paper?
It has a high carbon footprint (from energy required to create the paper and dispose of it in landfill) creating and storing this electronically will greatly reduce this.
How the Cloud can help reduce energy bills, IT costs and help move you towards being more sustainable
According to The Federation of Small Businesses, UK companies have experienced gas and electricity bill increases of 425% and 350% respectively over the last 18 months, with further rises expected. Together with a shrinking market, these put the future of many firms in jeopardy. One way to slash energy bills and make other savings in IT is to migrate to an energy efficient cloud server.
Outsourcing your IT energy usage
For an on-site server to run applications and store data, the average use will be 850 watts per server per hour. If the server is online 24/7, that means it will be using around 7,500 kWh per year to run each server. Additionally, costs may be incurred to run an air conditioning system to keep the servers cool. Overall, these costs could run into thousands per year.
Migrating to the cloud, all the associated energy costs are included in the price of the package. While the cost of cloud has increased globally because of the rise in energy prices, the impact on customers has been minimal. Therefore, by migrating to the cloud, businesses can significantly reduce their current energy bills and can expect their cloud services to be less affected over the medium term by the rising costs seen elsewhere.
Hardware and other savings
Big energy savings are not the only way that migrating to the cloud can cut costs when compared to operating a server in-house. A server is an expensive piece of equipment and requires a sizeable investment. In the cloud, on the other hand, there is no need for such an outlay. Instead, the infrastructure is part of the service and is paid for with a more manageable and cashflow-friendly monthly fee.
Other costs associated with in-house servers are also eliminated when migrating to the cloud. There’s no need for physical security or insurance as there is no server hardware on site. Responsibility for these falls to the cloud vendor. The vendor will also take care of maintenance and server admin on your behalf, ensuring the server runs optimally and that the operating system is updated and patched. As a result, the burden on IT teams and its cost in financial terms are also reduced.
Scalability
Another benefit of migrating to the cloud is scalability. In-house, scaling up requires the purchase of additional hardware and all the associated costs of using it. In the current economic climate, a reluctance to invest in scalability, while understandable, is something that is preventing many companies from moving forward. In the cloud, scalability is quick, easy, and cost-effective. Additional IT resources can be had on-demand, at the click of a mouse, and are charged for on a pay-as-you-go basis. Scaling back down is just as simple when the need arises.
