Organizations that want to succeed in the 21st century must recognize the key role sustainability plays in promoting competitiveness and long-term success. That’s why many businesses are investing in sustainable technologies and practices, such as modernizing existing infrastructure to help reduce energy usage and emissions while helping to reduce operational costs.
Modernization allows businesses to save money by optimizing performance, upgrading automation and freeing up resources. It also helps build more resilient systems and make customer experiences better. But for businesses that want to pursue sustainability, there are other advantages to modernization, such as creating growth opportunities, promoting environmental and social objectives, and reducing their impact on natural resources.
First, modernization enables the adoption of cloud-native architectures and intelligent application orchestration. These help to manage resources effectively, thanks to being able to allocate usage based on demand, cost, performance or other variables. The result is decreased electricity usage, which can help save important resources.
For example, if all US businesses were to transfer their email, productivity software and customer relationship management platforms to the cloud, their total energy consumption could drop by 87% (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory). This amount of energy is the equivalent of the energy consumed by Los Angeles in one big year.
Modernization also promotes economic sustainability by making businesses more efficient and productive. Thanks to new technology, features, fixes and updates can be rolled out faster and with less downtime. Organizations can also expect higher rates of innovation as they adopt next-generation technologies such as AI, DevOps, microservices and more.
Gartner has projected that a combination of automation technologies with optimally redesigned operational processes could lead to a cost reduction of up to 30%. That is real savings that businesses can pass along to their customers, or invest in further technology upgrades.
Data management modernization is another area where businesses can benefit from the adoption of sustainability practices. By creating managed copies of their back-up data, companies can reduce their reliance on physical data stores and make better use of the data they have. One study found that 86% of organizations that allow for analytics on secondary data also reported an increase in the efficacy of their analysis.
Socially, modernization has also made a difference. For instance, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced everyone to adapt to remote working, modern digital tools allowed many job responsibilities to continue unhindered. This, in turn, kept the newly unemployed from being idled.
Developing the right modernization approach to ensure maximum business value, while minimizing risks, is key. This includes conducting data-driven assessments of existing applications, creating a culture that supports continuous modernization, and balancing short-term needs against longer-term investments. Moreover, it is important that modernization addresses environmental, social and governance concerns.
In the end, sustainability is an investment companies have to make to succeed. It helps create a more competitive edge over rivals, while also reducing resource costs, increasing efficiency, unlocking innovation and responding to social challenges. And modernization is the best path to achieving those goals.
