Green IT: Best Practices for Responsible Digital Use

 Information technology has experienced exponential growth in recent years, becoming ubiquitous today. The lockdown periods we experienced accelerated this trend, prompting companies to implement resilient hardware and software infrastructures (on-demand and on-premise), accessible to employees both locally and remotely to ensure essential service continuity. Among individuals, there was also an increased use of devices and online services, with over 59 million internet users in France in January 2021 spending more than 5 hours on average online (source BDM "Key Figures of the Internet and Social Networks in France in 2021").

These significant figures obviously demonstrate the weight of our environmental footprint, contributing to climate change, ecosystem degradation, and the depletion of natural resources. Several studies indicate that the user work environment (computing devices, software...) is the area with the greatest impact, followed by data centers (at the forefront with cloud technologies), IT departments, and network infrastructures.

To limit the environmental impact of new technologies, a community of digital stakeholders, aware of the climate emergency, proposes a set of best practices aimed at developing a more responsible digital environment.     

Best Practices for a More Responsible Digital Environment

These best practices that contribute to a more responsible and sustainable digital environment are determined based on the life cycle of digital goods or services.

In the upstream phases, it will be necessary to establish a responsible purchasing strategy by precisely defining your needs in terms of hardware and software. You should also integrate reliable alternatives into your processes, such as the secondary market for perpetual second-hand software licenses. It will also be imperative to deploy a shared infrastructure to optimize data flow management and the use of hardware and software resources. Similarly, you will make your software architecture more eco-resilient and simplify user interfaces by focusing the scope of your applications on essential functionalities.

During the usage phases, IT departments should make the best use of the performance and storage capacities of existing hardware infrastructures. Each employee should incorporate best practices to limit the electrical consumption of their workstation (energy-saving settings, turning off the workstation and servers if inactive for an extended period) and ensure its longevity (regular maintenance, disk scanning, antivirus...). Regarding software, you should adopt a selective update strategy, prioritizing essential functionalities and security. Directly linked to data flow management and access, the storage architecture of your data and how your employees access it should be optimized. The printing area, with a non-negligible environmental impact (electricity, paper, and consumables consumption), should also be rethought to limit the number of printers per business unit and optimize their use. 

Second-Hand Software Licenses as a Strong Link in a Sustainable Circular Economy

Extending the lifespan of IT equipment, both hardware, and software, is one of the main challenges of more responsible computing. You are free to select software versions and quantities based on your usage and needs, thus avoiding over-licensing and the race for accessory technological innovations. By purchasing second-hand software licenses on the Softcorner marketplace that meet your precise functional requirements, you actively participate in developing a circular economy based on extending the lifespan of digital resources. Moreover, your investment in software licenses on the secondary market is safe and legal (European Court of Justice ruling on July 3, 2012). By adopting this alternative solution offered by the Softcorner marketplace, you benefit from fully compliant software licenses (documentation, license key...) at lower costs. You also gain agility and flexibility compared to managing new licenses subject to publishers' roadmaps.