Sustainability, much like digital transformation, has become a top corporate strategy objective in the recent years. Sustainability covers Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) concerns, and they are now a key instrument used by investors to evaluate organizations.
In a recent Gartner survey, CEOs considered environmental sustainability as a key differentiator and placed environmental sustainability in their top 10 strategic business priorities. Additionally, 74% of CEOs agreed that increasing Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) efforts attract investors toward their companies[1].
Many factors explain the shift organizations have taken in their strategy to become more sustainable.
- Regulatory: With the Paris agreement adopted in 2015, governments have taken a stricter approach to reduce carbon emissions. The agreement’s goal is to reach carbon neutrality or net-zero by 2050[2] to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F). Governments have started implemented carbon pricing in the form of carbon tax or Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) but also created new regulations such as the EU taxonomy for sustainable activities to clarify which investments are sustainable.
- Market dynamics: Consumers are looking to purchase more sustainable products, especially among Millennials and Gen Z.
- Corporate evaluation: Investors often evaluate organizations and look to reduce investment risks as companies with a good ESG are perceived to be safer and more stable. With a strong environmental strategy, organizations can also improve resource efficiency and reduce costs, and even improve operating profits by up to 60% according to a McKinsey Study[3]
- Attract and retain talent: Organizations that demonstrate sustainability are more likely to attract and retain talent, especially Millennials and Gen Z.
There are multiple ways enterprises can deliver more sustainable products and services:
- Reduce carbon footprint: Businesses can achieve this by reducing energy consumption, using renewable energy, working with local suppliers or reducing travel. The first step consists of measuring the current carbon footprint and then plan the sustainability strategy accordingly.
- Reduce waste, pollution, and increase recycling: Of course, this can’t be done overnight, especially when companies are in polluting industries, but many actions can be taken, and industrial activity can be better monitored and controlled. By doing so, organizations can also improve compliance with environmental regulations.
- Other ways include supporting environmental causes, use sustainable materials, and integrate sustainability choice in supply chain management.
Sustainable digital transformation can even enhance an organization’s competitiveness. By combining digitization and ESG strategies, organizations can use digital transformation to achieve sustainability.
Digital transformation and sustainability are not opposite concepts, but they are complementary.
While organizations build new customer experiences, create new mobile apps, redesign their processes and business capabilities, they can also take advantage of digital transformation to be more environmentally friendly. Moving applications to the cloud, going paperless, or inventing new business models that minimize car use are great ways to embrace sustainability.
Sustainable digital transformation often requires organizations to modernize their legacy IT and network infrastructure, not only to support sustainability efforts but also to reduce the proliferation of IT equipment accumulated over the years.
Companies must therefore rethink their networking strategy in a more sustainable way by implementing modern network solutions such as SD-WAN or NaaS (Network-as-a-Service):
1. SD-WAN consolidates branch WAN edge infrastructure
Advanced SD-WAN solutions now integrate many networking and security functions such as intelligent routing, WAN optimization and next-generation firewall (NGFW) capabilities in a single platform. Secure SD-WAN solutions indeed support advanced NGFW security features such as Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), IDS/IPS, DDoS protection and network micro-segmentation. This integration enables organizations to replace legacy firewalls, routers, and WAN optimization devices with a single appliance, greatly reducing hardware footprint and power consumption.
By using a secure SD-WAN, it is estimated that power consumption can be reduced threefold and even more. If we multiply these savings by the number of branch offices, it can lead to a drastic reduction in electricity and energy costs. An SD-WAN can also be implemented as a virtual appliance, saving even more energy.
In fact, SD-WAN provides organizations with increased flexibility to manage their network. With SD-WAN, network links such as MPLS, broadband internet, and 5G can be combined to optimize network communication from branches to headquarters or to the cloud. Advanced SD-WAN solutions indeed include network optimization techniques such as path conditioning to reduce the effect of jitter and packet loss often found in broadband internet. WAN optimization can also overcome the effects of network latency due to long distance with protocol acceleration techniques and compression algorithms.
But above all, network administrators can improve IT efficiency by centrally orchestrating network configurations and security policies across the entire fabric preventing errors and greatly simplifying operations. SD-WAN also gives network administrators enhanced visibility over the network to enable them to quickly resolve incidents.
2. SD-WAN supports cloud-first organizations for more sustainability
Migrating business applications to the cloud helps organizations to be more sustainable in addition to bringing more flexibility and facilitating remote working. Cloud computing enables organizations to reduce power consumption by “right-sizing” and sharing resources through hardware virtualization and multitenant architectures instead of using dedicated data centers that consume a large amount of energy and electronic equipment.
Advanced SD-WAN fully supports the transition to the cloud by intelligently steering application traffic to the cloud. Trusted applications such as Microsoft 365 or RingCentral are directly sent to the cloud while untrusted traffic is sent to cloud security services (Security Service Edge – SSE) for further inspection, so that the traffic is not backhauled to the data center. Virtual SD-WAN appliances can also be directly deployed in cloud service providers such as Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and AWS to accelerate the SaaS traffic and improve security.
3. Network as a service further enhances sustainability
Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) enables organizations to implement a network configuration that is right-sized and exactly matches business needs. NaaS can be quickly deployed as business grows, but it can also be scaled down to align with evolving business needs. It helps organizations to reduce network complexity and optimize network resources. Additionally, NaaS deployments can be centrally monitored using advanced AI/ML tools to ensure that the network operates optimally and make change only when needed.
With NaaS, the carbon footprint is reduced using data centers that globally optimize energy consumption and are often powered largely by renewable energy. Additionally, many NaaS vendors have implemented recycling programs to give hardware devices a second life or recycle them responsibly.
HPE has recently reaffirmed its promise to become a net-zero enterprise across its entire value chain, accelerating its target date by 10 years from 2050 to 2040.
HPE GreenLake is an edge-to-cloud platform that helps meet the sustainability goals of digital organizations. It provides multiple services including compute, storage, data protection and networking (NaaS). Customers transitioning to HPE GreenLake from traditional CapEx models can achieve a greater than 30% reduction in energy costs and total cost of ownership.
Additionally, the HPE AUS program (Asset Upcycling Services) enables organizations to safely retire and recycle IT equipment. It also includes a Circular Economy Report with a summary of items upcycled and the impact and savings achieved.
The Aruba EdgeConnect platform, part of HPE GreenLake, is a secure SD-WAN solution that helps organizations accelerate their sustainability efforts while modernizing their network. It includes advanced SD-WAN capabilities coupled with NGFW features allowing organizations to retire their legacy firewalls and routers, reduce their hardware footprint and save energy. The solution fully supports multi-cloud architectures that align with environmental goals of modern, digital sustainable enterprises. Available as-a-service, the solution is flexible and highly scalable to match every business need.
To learn more about Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN, please visit Aruba EdgeConnect Enterprise SD-WAN.
Other resources:
Four reasons to replace your branch firewall with a secure SD-WAN
HPE GreenLake Sustainability web page
Aruba and sustainability in a circular economy
HPE GreenLake for Networking solution overview
[1] Source: Gartner Survey Reveals Significant Shifts in CEO Thinking on Sustainability, Workforce Issues and Inflation in 2022
[2] Source: Paris Agreement, Wikipedia
[3] Source: How the E in ESG creates business value, McKinsey, 2020
