Filestream is the headline sponsor of the Great British Expos 2023

Sustainability and environmental concerns are increasingly at the forefront of decision-making for businesses of all sizes.

The drive to net zero and the current energy prices have sharpened thinking with companies about being more responsible for their emissions and for ensuring the sustainability of their supply.

This is true of any company which relies heavily on documentation. A company that wishes to store documents has three choices: paper, local servers or cloud storage.

Berkshire-based document management specialist company Filestream has been championing electronic document storage since 2003 and has seem millions of documents moved from paper to the Cloud.

Moving to a paperless office removes a huge carbon footprint. The CO2 emissions associated with paper use are far higher than the equivalent data storage in the cloud. It saves on space, the cost of storage, the threat of data loss and the inefficiency of finding important documents.

"Migrating to the cloud can save companies a lot of money," said Paul Day, technical director at Filestream.

"It slashes energy costs – according to The Federation of Small Businesses, UK companies have experienced gas and electricity bill increases of 425 per cent and 350 per cent respectively over the last 18 months, with further rises expected. At Filestream, our prices have increased only 5 per cent, which is significantly less than the 350 per cent average rise in electricity costs.

"It also cuts the need for IT capital expenditure, insurance and physical security, makes scalability fast and cost-efficient, reduces software licence fees and comes with technical support included in the price."

Here, Paul offers seven reasons why moving to cloud document storage is the right choice for eco-conscious companies:

1. Paperless: with cloud-based services, you can store all documents online and sign them digitally before distributing them. No more paper means fewer trees are cut down and far less printing and associated financial and environmental ink costs.
2. Virtual working: multiple people can work on the same document, remotely. You can sign, send and store documents in the cloud, so there is no need to be in the office, and no need for all those car journeys, which helps to reduce pollution.
3. Lower energy use: shifting your IT infrastructure into the cloud means you use fewer servers, cutting down on electricity use. Imagine every company in your town doing that, or in your county. A study sponsored by Google suggested that companies could save between 60 per cent and 85 per cent in energy costs with a shift to cloud-based services.
4. Reduced IT waste: if you no longer need servers and other associated IT equipment, you have no need to update, upgrade and replace, meaning less hardware needs to go to waste. Companies that still use their own data centres or servers find it difficult to scale IT systems in accordance with demand, resulting in increased waste, cost and energy use.
5. Hardware refresh speed: it may seem counterintuitive to say that cloud infrastructure is more eco-friendly because it is replaced more often, but migrating to the cloud means that you use fewer machines in total with global data storage consolidated in fewer places. Each new generation of hardware uses less energy and has a lower impact on the environment.
6. Renewable energy: big companies, like Google and Amazon are investing heavily in renewable energy plants to power the data centres used in the cloud, so moving to the cloud is helping to drive investment in green energy.
7. Reduced emissions: lower energy use results in fewer carbon emissions, plus fewer trees cut down and less waste going to landfill.  

Maintenance, admin and insurance will also be taken care of for your company. Not only can it prove more cost-efficient, but cloud storage provides enhanced security. Storing a document in the cloud means it exists in multiple places on different servers, guarding against one location becoming inaccessible or damaged. Documents can also be encrypted to offer protection against digital theft.

As the list above confirms, cloud storage can provide efficiencies for your company, including cost, security, space (no need for servers or filing cabinets full of paper), retrieval, but can also provide eco-benefits at a time when sustainable practices are vital for the success of a business.