Digital technology has become a core of human lives and the way it transforms companies is truly exceptional. Industries adopt cutting-edge tools, technologies, and frameworks to compete with evolving market and customer needs. And, driven by innovative culture, the forward-looking solution to optimize technology is environmental protection. With this, in contrast, the need for sustainable software engineering has evolved which can make a difference for technological companies to evolve and impact.
Carbon footprint is the most focused aspect for industries as the use case for technology utilization is on a global scale. That’s why industries have a dominant role to play in driving sustainability which can impact the global economy thus transitioning the world to net zero.
Sustainable software contributes to great business value
With technology, sustainability must be supported – greater alignment and strategies to be made to achieve the net-zero transition. Also, companies must shift to achieve sustainability using technology, create sustainable technology, and scale sustainability. This embraces global software companies to build value chains, highlight the role of top-most influential personalities, and take accountability to address environmental issues.
However, the sustainability agenda can’t be fulfilled without technology radar. So, organizations must address sustainability challenges with emerging technologies so that these can unfold huge business value chains.
Sustainable software development strategy
The focus for software developers to develop green software aligns with four principles – Choosing a particular language to develop products, designing AI models that reduce carbon footprint, using the latest tools, and reducing data usage. All these principles are understood when organizations explore various options while designing and coding.
-
Developing language
Energy efficiency depends upon the programming languages that we use because different languages have varying impacts on energy usage. It also depends upon the responsiveness of the program written in a particular language and the memory needed to perform tasks. Both these aspects make the difference in energy usage and the size of the carbon footprint as well. While this principle is still in the research phase, it depends on developers who aim for bringing greater good to the ESG.
-
Designing the AI models
Build the specific AI models based on the business use cases while developing the software. Software engineers can create compelling machine learning algorithms that consume less energy to run effectively. A deep learning approach can be created by developing teams to reduce unnecessary energy consumption in software applications.
Our suggested approach is for developers to create coding sequences and share their programming with the other teams. Since each development phase must undergo continuous testing and experimentation, sharing code would eliminate duplicity of work which would mean less energy waste. The best way for organizations to make this approach a successful one is through partnerships.
-
New-age tools in action
In the present scenario, there are many tools and resources that help developers to lessen the carbon footprint in the developmental process. One such analysis is to measure the energy consumed by one system based on its software enacting programs. This method of charting and gathering data about the energy used by software programs is known as dynamic code analysis.
Through this monitoring, it’s easy to track energy efficiency. Developers can adjust for sustainability and reduce the impact of energy waste in real-time by honing the software for specific tasks. This will enable developers to tweak the areas for optimal energy usage. Dynamic code analysis is a powerful tool to measure progress and track energy & efficiency and improve design choices for software development.
-
Begin to code & design with environmental awareness
Awareness makes a big difference when software is designed with environmental sustainability. The environment-friendly software can cleverly adapt and adjust based on the code written that cuts down energy and data usage. Especially, loops in programming consume irrefutable energy without meeting any goals. It’s in the hands of developers who can reduce loop structures and work on a streamlined and more efficient program process.
The same logic goes for unused features. These unused features make it hard for software to work in addition to consuming more energy. And sooner, this makes software unsustainable which is not a good practice for organizations.
-
Reducing data usage
The more data involved in running a program, the more energy is used to store, recall, or access the data. Not that it’s possible to write expirations for every program, but it’s a necessity to work on deleting unused data by setting expirations to it. Programs must be set to an approach to use cache data in a streamlined way which can reduce the amount of data stored in the backend.
Depending on the accuracy levels and resolutions for media to be maintained, developers can work on them to reduce energy wastage.
Time to adapt to green software
Primarily, the potential for ‘’green software’’ to bring a transformation in enterprise IT sustainability should be considered. It is obvious that software does not release any carbon on its own, but the software must be functional on hardware.
Looking into more depth in the context of enterprise IT, the manner in which software is designed, developed and deployed can definitely have a huge impact on the carbon footprint. Therefore, it becomes crucial for it to be an important factor when it comes to sustainability strategy.
A new blueprint for sustainable software
As per a recent report, there were a few priorities set for the green software which consists of boosting the usage of effective development practices, lessening the energy usage of AI models, re-assessing the methods of designing distributed ledgers and much more.
One such great example of the potential is Cloud Infrastructure. According to the reports, the carbon effect of shifting to public cloud may be the same as taking 22 million cars off the road.
It can be said that cloud infrastructure is becoming more efficient with time. For instance, Google is now utilizing a carbon-intelligent channel that allows its data centers to survive workloads at the optimal duration of the day for using renewable sources of energy.
Small changes drive great outcomes
It is important to note that a full-scale cloud transfer is not needed to enrich sustainability as sometimes, small and simple changes can also create a big difference.
At the end, it is about striking a balance between software performance and energy usage that works differently for every individual use case.
Aim for scaling up continuously
There is a requirement for partnerships since working with the ecosystem is the primary factor for inculcating sustainability at scale. There are obstacles which are too great and too systematic for any company to resolve by itself. Considering the example of green software once again, new skills, design-related specifications, and cross-industry standards are required to gear up the adoption of green development principles, the ecosystem of companies is needed to come together.
To conclude, technology is about to act as a key tool in guiding enterprise ecosystems in supporting the journey to net zero. Also, at the same time, it is not to be forgotten that technology itself is required to be more sustainable in nature. The focus is on CIOs to have a fresh, new glimpse at their sustainability methods and place both of these concepts as a priority, as they pave a path to a more efficient and sustainable future.
