Sustainability in UC: A call to action for IT leaders

Sustainable unified communications and its role

IT leaders evaluate UC platforms based on a variety of factors before making a final buying decision, including collaboration capabilities, integration, security and price. But sustainability is a lesser-known -- but still important -- factor IT leaders should consider. Let's examine why.

1. Meeting sustainability goals. Environmental regulations, brand reputation and investor pressure have made sustainability a strategic priority in long-term operational planning. IT leaders are already taking actionable steps to implement UC to support environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals. Taking these steps can add to the company's reputation, attracting customers and young talent.

2. Hardware consolidation. The overall hardware cycle, from manufacturing to disposal, yields the release of harmful carbon. UC replaces hardware sprawl -- along with costly copper wiring and cables -- with cloud-native applications, promoting sustainability and reducing CapEx. A less-frequent hardware replacement cycle also results in lower demand, which, in turn, reduces supply chain emissions and improves inventory management.

3. Low pollution. Sustainable unified communications supports high-quality online conferences without requiring the construction of specially equipped rooms with power-hungry lighting and speaker systems.  

4. Paperless operations and reduced e-waste. Enterprises generate large amounts of documentation. By supporting online collaboration and file sharing, UC reduces the generation of paper waste and reliance on hardware like USB flash drives and CDs. This eliminates the need to buy and dispose of this e-waste.

Energy impact of UC

While UC can help companies meet their sustainability goals, its environmental impact also needs to be considered. Factors to assess include the following:

1. Power consumption. Legacy UC hardware is the main driver of carbon emissions. However, multiple virtual conferences running for hours, overuse of the cloud, inefficient algorithms, unstructured storage and various software operations powered by network transport contribute to hidden energy drain.

2. Data center costs. Most UC cloud-based platforms rely on data centers for services, such as calling, messaging, file sharing and conferencing. Data centers consume large amounts of power to run these processes and store data.

3. Energy and water-intensive workloads. The advent of AI-powered collaboration tools and machine learning-based software within UC platforms translates into higher data center GPU workloads, resulting in greater energy consumption. However, hyperscale cloud providers, such as AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, use renewable energy resources to reduce expenses.  

4. Networking demands. Data-intensive UC services, such as video conferencing and always-on cloud communications, increase bandwidth demand and network energy consumption.

5. End-user device consumption. UC devices, such as webcams, headsets, HD displays, conference room connectors, and virtual and augmented reality devices, draw more power and place extensive loads on servers.

Actionable steps to support sustainability in UC

Over the past decade, IT leaders have made major decisions to align with net-zero carbon emissions goals. Many nations and multinational corporations are working toward net-zero goals with a common deadline of 2030. Here's how UC can help:

1. Opt for green practices. Choosing green UC and UCaaS vendors is a good first step. Some UC vendors market themselves specifically for their greener agendas. Another common strategy is to invest in low-power, carbon-neutral and recyclable products.

2. Adopt structured working policies. Implement remote and hybrid work, as well as BYOD policies. These can reduce emissions caused by daily commutes and e-waste. This also reduces office space usage and HVAC energy consumption.

3. Reduce business travel. Travelling to in-person conferences generates high carbon footprints, as much as four to five tons per person, according to one international study. Accommodation and logistics also contribute. However, virtual events and conferences can reduce the need to travel.

4. Focus on digital transformation. Sustainability is tied to digital transformation. From the perspective of UC vendors, greenfield customers contribute more to sustainability goals. IT leaders must move to managed, scalable and cloud-based UC strategies, whether fully managed or hybrid. Avoid fragmented over-the-top UC platforms that increase complexity and costs. A fully managed cloud model can offload predictive maintenance, updates and upgrades for IT teams. 

5. Transparent reporting. IT leaders responsible for operations must highlight the environmental effect of their communications systems might contribute and their plans to reduce that footprint. Transparent reporting includes electricity bills, the number of virtual meetings, hardware emissions, supply chain carbon from purchased hardware and data security practices. The reports must focus on reducing the most serious greenhouse emissions, known as Scope 2 and Scope 3.

Venus Kohli is an engineer turned technical content writer, having completed a degree in electronics and telecommunication at Mumbai University in 2019. Kohli writes for various tech and media companies on topics related to semiconductors, electronics, networking, programming, quantum physics and more.