When green policies make real business sense – lowering costs and boosting performance

 Global warming. Everyone is familiar with the concept and few would dispute the evidence. The business world has made strong commitments to tackling the problem by reducing carbon emissions. But some companies are accused of ‘green washing’ – implying that they’re trying to win favour by appearing to be environmentally friendly. The South African National Biodiversity Institute SANBI) is not one of them.

SANBI champions biodiversity across South Africa and is committed to reducing its impact on the environment. Yet the organisation was well aware that changing the way it worked – particularly IT – required skill and expertise. It turned to Dell Consulting Services to support a complete IT re-think that would move it to a highly consolidated virtualized platform based on Hyper-V technology from Microsoft.

The IT team at SANBI built a strong business case for virtualization and won backing from key stakeholders within the organisation. This was backed up by the responsive support, expert advice and careful management provided by Dell Consulting Services. In all, the IT guys at SANBI and the Dell team helped the organisation make a successful switch to a more effective, environmentally friendly IT infrastructure.

Few would argue that SANBI shows what can be achieved when companies take sustainability seriously, investing time and effort in changing the way they work. Today, SANBI has cut its carbon footprint, with around 76 per cent few servers to power. But it’s more than that – the organisation has improved the effectiveness of its personnel. Systems are more reliable, so staff are more efficient and the IT team spends 40% less time managing the infrastructure, giving it more time to focus on higher value tasks.

Watch the video to find out more…

Read more about the SANBI story here (pdf).

About the Author: Kathy Mahady