The UN’s Global Environment Outlook for Business 2019 brief, Adapt to Survive: Business transformation in a time of uncertainty calls on businesses to dramatically reduce their environmental footprints. Failure to make the transformation, it warns, is a risk to their survival.
There are many different ways a business can become sustainable: reducing waste, preventing pollution, adopting clean energy, conserving water, greening the planet by planting trees, using sustainable materials, making their products sustainable, and by adopting sustainable business travel policies.
Here are some of the ways that Compete366 is working to become more sustainable and reduce its impact on the environment:
- We encourage all our employees to work remotely – removing the fuel demand of commuting and associated pollution.
- We are built on a cloud infrastructure for all of the services we deliver
- Our sales, service and accounts processes are all handled using online methods for communication, ordering, invoicing – predominantly using Microsoft Office365 and Microsoft Teams
- We encourage the use of public transport for travel to customer meetings, if required, to reduce both fuel use and pollution
- We use only electronic marketing methods, and certainly don’t send out lots of paper junk mail.
- In our procurement, we make use of recycled products wherever available
- We aim to work with suppliers who have environmental management systems in place.
- We encourage our team members to power off their kit when they aren’t working (overnight and weekends)
- We use digital back up systems for our work
Read our Environmental Policy Statement
Microsoft’s Carbon Neutral Credentials
As a Microsoft Gold Partner, we are proud of Microsoft’s commitment to being carbon negative by 2030. In fact, Microsoft has stated that by 2050 they will remove from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted either directly or by electrical consumption since it was founded in 1975.
You can hear Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella explain their ambitious goal in the video featured on the top LHS of this page.
With a detailed plan, Microsoft has also launched an initiative to use Microsoft technology to help its suppliers and customers around the world reduce their own carbon footprints and a new $1 billion climate innovation fund to accelerate the global development of carbon reduction, capture, and removal technologies. Microsoft’s progress on all these fronts will be published in a new annual Environmental Sustainability Report that will detail its carbon impact and reduction journey. And lastly, all this work will be supported by Microsoft’s voice and advocacy supporting public policy that will accelerate carbon reduction and removal opportunities.
Cloud Computing – is it more carbon efficient?
As a Microsoft Azure expert, we are pleased to confirm that the Microsoft Azure cloud platform is more carbon efficient than on-premise or traditional datacentres.
In fact, a 2018 study found that using the Microsoft Azure cloud platform can be up to 93 per cent more energy-efficient and up to 98 per cent more carbon efficient than on-premise solutions.
Some key findings from the report were:
- The Microsoft Cloud is between 22 and 93 percent more energy efficient than traditional enterprise datacentres, depending on the specific comparison being made.
- When taking into account Microsoft’s renewable energy purchases, the Microsoft Cloud is between 72 and 98 percent more carbon efficient
- Microsoft Cloud computing offers significant advantages in energy consumption and carbon emissions over on-premises deployments
- The main drivers which contribute to the smaller energy and carbon footprint of the Microsoft Cloud are
- IT operational efficiency
- IT equipment efficiency
- Datacentre infrastructure efficiency
- The purchase of renewable electricity, which will power 100 percent of electricity consumed in Microsoft datacentres, buildings, and campuses by 2025.
Read the report – The Carbon Benefits of Cloud Computing: a Study of the Microsoft Cloud
Compete366 and the Environment
Download a PDF which summarises our approach
To find out more about how we can help you to migrate to the Microsoft Cloud please Contact Us
