The short answer is yes. When controlling your Software as a Service usage you will no longer waste energy!
Microsoft has just announced a big carbon neutral policy. Other corporations want to do this too, eliminating wasted energy on unused resources.
SaaS is software in the cloud, accessible from web browsers instead of individual computers or business networks. If you have not signed up for SaaS yet, other perks of this licensing include the subscription model. This means the software is licensed via subscription month-to-month and can be delivered by the creator, like Microsoft of Adobe. You will not need to host any applications on your premises by using SaaS, which reduces the amount of IT or maintenance involvement.
All of this makes SaaS a perfect contender for future business practices. But what makes it a contender for sustainable software?
SaaS is seemingly inherently greener than on-premise software. This is boiled down to the power usage. According to Forbes, A user environment with on-premise software uses more power than SaaS. However, this means that the energy usage for SaaS switches from the user environment to the data centres. The book Harnessing Green IT: Principles and Practices suggests in order to save on energy, it is important to select data centres that are power efficient but also closer to the user’s environment.
Besides this, other ways of reducing energy with SaaS is to ensure you know your usage and non-usage per application and to monitor your users. For instance, you can save on energy by reharvesting unused licenses or even downgrading. With help on this, TBSC offers Smarter 365. Smarter 365 is a SaaS management tool specializing in Microsoft Office 365. Smarter 365 automatically recommends how to reduce IT costs whilst finding the best Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions for every user. For more information about this product, please visit our website: https://tbsc.cloud/smarter-365/
Keep an eye out for our SaaS as Sustainable Software white paper coming out soon!