TERESA MADALENORunning a data center consumes a lot of energy, but the ability to improve energy efficiency is immense and many companies are starting to demonstrate this.
According to a US government study data centers in the United States consumed about 70 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2014, which accounted for 2 percent of the country’s total energy consumption. The good news is that the U.S Department of Energy reports they’ve also discovered that in recent years efficiency improvements have played a big role in starting to control the growth rate of the data center industry’s energy consumption.
Salesforce is a San Francisco-based CRM provider and they recently announced that they have achieved net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, Energy Manager Today reports that they are now able to provide carbon neutral cloud for all customers. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It refers to the practices and technologies that companies can use to manage and analyze customer data. These systems are designed to bring together information across various channels, including the company’s website, telephone, direct mail, live chat, and social media.
Salesforce started out in 1999 offering traditional desktop CRM software, but moved to CRM in the cloud, thus making it more accessible. Company officials now say that they are “50 times more energy and carbon efficient than traditional on premise software”. This allows customers to avoid a large level of emissions over time – about 2 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2016. When it comes to the company’s operations, company officials have indicated that they have reached net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by expanding on existing sustainability efforts over the last few years.
Delivering an environmentally friendly customer platform and implementing energy efficiency in the day-to-day operations, is only part of the Salesforce sustainability effort. The company has also developed a group called Earthforce. Essentially, these are employees of Salesforce who volunteer to promote environmental responsibility in the community.
Salesforce was one of many companies across the globe that committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions back in 2015. The video link below was put together at a time when there was a lot of talk about companies who were making a commitment to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emission by 2050 – a goal Saleforce appears to have reached ahead of time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMHQO5dpGJw