Table of contents of the article:
In the spring and summer of 2020 we experienced a time when the color of the sky went from pale gray to light blue. When we could hear the sound of nature when we went out to our cities. For me personally it was the first spring since childhood in which I did not suffer from severe hay fever symptoms.
That year was a special one and led us at Managed Server to redefine the value of sustainability. As employees in our daily work, we strive to make these values guide us both in personal decision making and in the company as a whole.
As an inhabitant of this planet in 2021 and responsible for the impact of our business, it is obvious to me that sustainable value in any business cannot be limited to financial aspects alone. We need to broaden our perspective and also look at our social and ecological impact. In financial terms, this is commonly referred to as the environmental, social and governance impact (ESG). It is not enough to be carbon neutral. If we want positive global change to happen, Managed Server as a business must have a positive net impact on the global environment.
Consumers and businesses are asking suppliers to make better choices and to make sure they invest or deal with companies that have a broader view of business sustainability. So how do we, as a Managed Server, in practice?
The UN has defined the 17 objectives of sustainable development (SDG). We believe it is also our responsibility to be part of the solution and to help achieve these goals. This way we will be in tune with strong global trends.
As a hosting and systems company, we want to achieve the goals in
Managed Server's mission is to build a sustainable and fast Internet by building a global, faster and more efficient website hosting infrastructure that is accessible to all.
The term Green Hosting was coined for the sustainable development of our sector. With the commitment outlined in this article, we will strive to give the term Green Hosting an ever more valuable meaning. We created a new page of Green Hosting to explain our commitment and what we are doing. The page aims to clarify how we are working with sustainability and why Managed Server's performance-based approach to hosting is inherently aligned with sustainability.
Goal 9 of the SDG; Industry, innovation and infrastructure
Building resilient infrastructures, promoting inclusive and sustainable industrialization and promoting innovation
Managed Server provides an infrastructure that is open and available to anyone. It is important for us to ensure that we deliver our services to the public in a sustainable way. We must contribute to the persistent development and continuous improvement of the way we deliver this infrastructure.
The internet as a whole currently uses 2,4 million MWh per day and over 1,9 million tonnes of CO 2 per day (source: internetlivestats.com), and these numbers grow by the minute.
The computing and network infrastructure should at least be powered by green energy. Therefore, we have selected our upstream suppliers to ensure that the data centers we are using use green energy.
This summer we started developing services called Bestcache.io. One of the main properties of this service is that it extends our vision of what the Internet of the future should be like. We are taking ownership not only of the hosting, but also of the delivery on the Internet. This allows us to reduce the carbon footprint of both hosting and the internet for our customers.
BestCache.io is for now an unofficial spin-off that is still in its infancy, waiting to commercially outline some of the preview technologies we are already using in a handful of customers who have accepted the technology challenge and our new implementations.
In the spirit of sustainability and Green Hosting we have innovated in the areas of resource consumption also at the software level. This is key, because increasing resource efficiency in running software has a much greater potential impact than any hardware choice we can make.
Providing fast response times for both cached and non-cached web requests is critical when offering Green Hosting. Low TTFB time on uncached web requests means hosting is efficient and sustainable. Our internal culture of performance first ensures that we reiterate and continually innovate to keep pace with the fastest, and therefore most resource-efficient, real-time processing capabilities available on the international market.
Goal 12 of the SDG; Responsible consumption and production
Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
The main competitive advantage of Managed Server, performance, goes hand in hand with the reduction of compute resources. Managed Server customers, since the company's founding, have spent far fewer IT resources than they would have done by hosting their websites with any other competitor. We achieve this through the continuous development and evolution of our proprietary hosting software platform, which is relatively much more efficient than other alternatives.
Another aspect of consumption is efficiency. In hosting, resources are generally shared in one way or another, regardless of whether they are containers, VPSs, or cloud instances. However, there are significant differences in the effectiveness of resource sharing across platforms. In Managed Server we have eliminated the waste and overheads generated by running out of computer resources. This allows us to achieve much higher density and resource sharing without overhead between sites on the Managed Server.
Resource efficiency is an integral part of every Managed Server employee and associate and is part of how we design our services. But we don't stop with our own employees. We also want our customers to become more aware of the resources they use when they own a website. We will publish articles and content that will help developers and our customers be more resource efficient. The benefit is that it goes hand in hand with faster performance and a better user experience for website visitors.
Goal 17 of the SDG; Partnership for goals
Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development
Sometime during 2020 we received a letter in the mail from our client focusing the entire political and electoral online campaign on the environment. They asked questions about Managed Server and sustainability, what we were doing about it and where they could read about it on our website. Their letter put the topic on the agenda at Managed Server and led us to a broader discussion with this specific customer.
By starting to ask questions and talk about sustainability, green energy, waste and consumption with suppliers, customers, partners and employees, we inspire all of them in the direction of contributing to this in their own way. Every little contribution counts.
After conducting an internal audit of our carbon footprint, we found there was a small footprint left to account for. This led us to research climate quotas and the best way to compensate for any residual footprint, generated, for example, by just having employees in offices or transport to conferences and the like. After checking out a variety of different offers internationally, the feeling was that many of the services and compensation options available were difficult to validate and trustworthy.
We do not draw a line for where this project ends, but rather seek to further explore how we can corroborate our commitment. We observe our inner workings, our employees, offices, travel and business activities such as conferences. We want to obtain relevant certifications and participate in networks and projects with suppliers, partners, customers and other companies who share our vision and our values.
This launch of our Managed Server Green Hosting concept will only expand further.
If you find what we're working on exciting and have thoughts on how Managed Server can get even better, contact us - we'd love to talk to you!
