Higher efficiency results in lower energy costs and a reduced carbon footprint. In one of my previous energy saving tips, we’ve already talked about tuning up your PC’s power options for energy savings. Now let’s have a look at the applications you’re running. Productivity is not the only factor to consider when evaluating upgrades on operating systems and software.

That’s right, computer processing time translates into energy use. Do you have applications storing and retreiving data? How about manufacturing, production, or even Point of Sale, inventory or CRM? Older applications and older operating systems can be using more energy, and affecting other environmental factors. Maybe it’s not by much, or maybe it’s just enough to make a difference to you and your business over an extended period, like a year or more.

An enterprise application upgrade resulting in improved overall data processing speed or network efficiency could reduce energy use, and invoke other environmental benefits. Wide-scale deployment of solutions improving processing time will reduce energy used by the machines, which in turn produces less heat, in turn requiring less ventilation, lowering electrical load, and reducing the load on HVAC systems, reducing carbon emissions, and requiring smaller ductwork, improving the usable space, utilizing leaner building materials… well, you get the idea.

Energy efficiency carries some weight in today’s businesses when costing upgrades. Many organizations by themselves are too small to witness a measurable effect, but wide-scale adoption of energy-saving policies by many organizations is considered environmental stewardship…which is a topic for a completely different blog, right?

- Bill

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Bill Bowman
Senior Technology Advisor
Centrend, Inc.
888-558-9550 ext. 135