Go Online, Go Green
Over the past few years, the internet platform has been conquering almost every sphere of day-to-day activities. The most amazing fact about this transition from the traditional methodology to the internet-based era has been its quick adoption which is rated amongst the fastest adopted revolutions in the history of transformation. Apart from the benefits of cost, time, and effort savings, one of the major reasons for the promotion of the online era is its contribution to the environment. The internet trend extends its contribution to the environment in a number of ways:
Digital Documents: Paper is consumed for a number of purposes including study material for students, paperwork in offices for maintenance of records, pamphlets of business enterprises, various registration forms, and many more. With the online revolution, the papered approach has changed to one that is governed by digital documents. Practically, the ‘online’ era has made a massive contribution to saving paper and hence, saving trees.
Fuel Efficiency and Pollution Control: Online banking, a deposit of utility application, and bill payments have brought about great comfort in the lives of people as they can perform all these tasks at their free will. Earlier, people had to drive to various places to establish these tasks. This resulted in traffic and a lot of fuel consumption along with a waste of time and effort. Having all these facilities at one’s fingertips saves the exploitation of the limited resources of the Earth. Besides, this process also saves harmful emissions from being released into the atmosphere and thereby helps in keeping the environment clean and green.
Hosted infrastructure: Most of the corporate enterprises in today’s world are based on IT. With loads of data to store and a large number of applications for seamlessly managing a number of operations, the need for setting up massive IT infrastructure seems obvious. However, cloud computing and the use of the internet have helped organizations achieve all the lavish benefits of premise-based systems without having to set up any hardware. Third-party hosting providers host client data and applications over the cloud generated on their servers located within massive data centers. Since there is no hardware, there is no wear and tear related and hence, no waste generation.
Online communication: The POTS lines prevalent in the olden times have now almost disappeared from corporate sector usage. The introduction of hosted communication has brought about a major difference in the world of telephony. With hosted private branch exchange systems, calls can be made online with the use of any mobile media supporting an internet connection. This introduces mobility thereby providing a competitive edge to the mobile networks and the cost of making calls is drastically less. This communication is considered a boon since there is no hardware setup or connection of wires that are required. Users can simply log in to their accounts and start making the calls online.
Energy Savings: With a major part of IT infrastructure being hosted, organizations save a considerable amount of electric power that would otherwise be required for running the same. Most of the sensitive equipment requires a comfortable environment to work in. This environment is generally maintained with HVAC systems that consume considerable electric power. Utilizing the online cloud for corporate purposes contributes a lot to the environment through effective energy savings.
‘Online’ is the new green revolution. Internet and the exceeding technological advancements have together brought about an unimaginable era of enhanced operational efficiency. With this massive pace of development and adoption, days are not far when the internet will become indispensable for a major part of corporate and domestic activities. Environment safety will then inevitably come along.
