SAAS IS GREENER

How SaaS Computing Solutions Save Money and Protect The Environment

On-premise ERP systems carry significant hidden costs in terms of the infrastructure needed to house business data as well as the environmental impact of individual corporate data centers. With Workday SaaS solutions, you can reduce your data storage costs and your carbon footprint at the same time, creating a win for the environment, your corporate stakeholders and the bottom line.

SaaS Solutions Reduce the High Cost of Data

Modern corporations rely on data and corporate data centers house thousands of servers that provide that data, power applications, and automate a range of processes. Building and operating these centers consume increasing portions of corporate IT budgets, leaving less available capacity for high-priority technology projects. And as the demand for data and computing resources continues to increase, the rising cost and environmental impact of providing that data threatens to have a significant impact on corporate profitability.

Stakeholders Care about Corporate Sustainability

At the same time, corporate stakeholders such as regulators, stockholders and consumers are taking a greater interest in how companies manage their carbon footprints. Sustainability is also a differentiator when it comes to attracting and retaining talent. As a result, corporations are under increasing pressure from all sides - financial, regulatory, customer, brand - to engage in sustainable business practices.

SaaS is More Sustainable

SaaS is a software delivery model that allows companies to share computing resources rather than building and maintaining their own solutions. With SaaS, computing resources are shared and optimized across a large number of customers, driving economies of scale in terms of lower costs and energy consumption and higher computing efficiency. Because the SaaS business model depends on efficient computing and computing investments are shared across many customers, computing decisions such as runtime processing, load balancing, data storage, energy management, power consumption, server selection, and architectural design are optimized.

Workday, a SaaS ERP Software vendor, takes 'green' even further by purchasing Renewable Energy Credits to offset the energy used by its facilities and data centers, with the goal of providing 100% carbon neutral SaaS solutions. For more information on this and other sustainability initiatives at Workday, see the Workday sustainability report.

Sustainability Pays

The Carbon Disclosure Project recently released a study that provides some interesting numbers on the sustainability of utilizing cloud computing solutions (both economically and environmentally). The study was conducted using 11 global firms as case studies, including two Workday customers: Aviva and Applied Materials.

Key findings:

• Cloud computing solutions can avoid millions of metric tons of CO2.
• Potential financial benefits from cloud computing run into $ billions.
• Cloud computing delivers a positive net present value (NPV).
• Cloud computing brings business efficiency savings.

The overall results show that by 2020, "large U.S. companies that use cloud computing can achieve annual energy savings of $12.3 billion and annual carbon reductions equivalent to 200 million barrels of oil—enough to power 5.7 million cars for one year.