SMBs Can Save “Green” by Going “Green” with Cloud-Based Technology
Small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) decrease power consumption and reduce utility bills when switching to cloud-based communication services, according to Venture Domain Hosting.
According to Michael Osterman, principal of industry analyst firm Osterman Research, "The savings stemming from eliminating on-site servers can reach thousands of dollars per month for the average 100-person business. The source of these savings is primarily reduced license and staffing costs, but lower power consumption alone contributes up to about USD $870 in savings per server each year."
With technologies critical to service reliability and efficiency, Venture Domain Hosting can power approximately 240 mailboxes with BlackBerry, OCS and SharePoint using resources equivalent to a single server. An in-house installation, with the redundancy appropriate to the business critical nature of these services, would likely use four to eight servers.
Small- and mid-sized businesses are increasingly outsourcing services such as business email, telephony, smartphones, instant message, and fax to achieve savings, higher reliability, and access to 24x7 support.
"Many small- and mid-sized businesses are interested in reducing their environmental footprint, but the realities of their business require they balance those efforts against the impact to the bottom line," says Jack Anderson, COO, Venture Domain Hosting. "Outsourcing communications technology and using hosted providers can help businesses reduce costs, replace big hardware expenses with predictable monthly bills, and cut back on power consumption. These same services also help businesses operate remote workforces with less travel, further reducing energy consumption and costs."
Companies looking to reduce their environmental impact can follow these five easy tips:
- Have employees turn off computers when leaving the office at night.
- Use video conferencing instead of business travel.
- Encourage public transportation. Offer employees travel vouchers or reimbursement for your city’s public transportation system.
- Unplug unnecessary electronics at the end of the day. Electronics such as chargers, fans and lamps use unnecessary power even when in "off" mode.
- Adopt hosted communications. Outsourcing your company’s servers will save your business on electric bills as well as valuable company time and resources spent on in-house servers.
