We help you understand and measure the holistic sustainability trade-offs in enterprise software and data platforms. We then guide you to take pragmatic steps to reduce the impact of software projects on people and the natural environment.
Despite what the technology industry might say, software has real-world impacts and risks that need to be considered and mitigated. Sustainability goals are intrinsic to modern organisations and yet there is a general lack of understanding of how to make software truly sustainable.
At Scott Logic, we advise on and implement sustainable solutions across a series of sustainability themes. We go beyond just green and carbon considerations to design and build software that balances the many trade-offs – including impacts to ongoing software costs, impacts to users, and security and risk considerations – while aligning sustainability with organisational quality goals.
While climate action is important, there is a danger in over-indexing on carbon emission calculation rather than looking at pragmatic steps that provide balanced sustainable outcomes including, but not limited to, CO2e emissions reduction. Our holistic view is summarised below:
At Scott Logic, we understand the complexities of navigating the technology landscape from a sustainability point of view. That’s why we created the Technology Carbon Standard.
It’s a method of classifying and mapping an organisation’s technology estate. Once an organisation's technology is categorised, auditing and measuring carbon emissions becomes much easier. This process brings attention to the parts of the organisation where emissions are highest, making improvement opportunities more apparent.
The Technology Carbon Standard aligns with the GHG protocol scopes and goes beyond by providing further signposting to open source methodologies and guidance to reduce carbon emissions.
We’ve made the Technology Carbon Standard an open source project in our commitment to sustainability and to helping other organisations take steps on their journey
A trailblazer in environmental sustainability, DS Smith sought Scott Logic’s support to develop a pragmatic framework that would allow the company to be self-sufficient in mapping, measuring and mitigating its technology carbon emissions.
We help you create an actionable strategy for green software, one that creates a practical alignment between your organisation’s sustainability goals and your technology transformation efforts. And you can trust that the impartial advice we provide on your architectural choices will be independent of vendor greenwashing.
We assess if, how, and when migrating to the cloud is more sustainable than on-premises. To do this, we consider electricity CO2 intensity and your existing investments in infrastructure, skills and supportability. We review existing cloud deployment against the sustainability elements of well-architected frameworks and industry patterns catalogues, and advise on pragmatic, cloud-native approaches that enable the full benefits of the flexible cloud operating model.
We review existing on-premises investments and legacy platforms to understand if, when, and how these should be modernised for business productivity and sustainability improvements. We assess the availability of skills, support and security, and the lifecycle of the infrastructure (alongside its environmental footprint), to determine the options for modernisation – and we can support you with the implementation of these transformations.
For many years, hardware has often been thrown at problems because compute was viewed as cheap. Turns out it isn’t so cheap after all, when you consider the environmental (and long-term financial) costs. We help your teams develop sustainable development practices through which they can manage technical debt and refactor legacy code for greater efficiency, greater maintainability and reduced operational costs.
For the green and carbon considerations, we align our approach with open source and science-backed, cross-industry frameworks such as the GHG Protocol and Green Software Foundation.
We don’t just accept the numbers that vendors generate, we take a pragmatic approach to calculating and validating the impacts of software.
Where possible, this includes the embodied carbon footprint (impacts associated with the creation of systems) as well as the energy consumption from running systems.
We apply those same international standards to Scott Logic in pursuit of our aim to be a more sustainable business. They underpin our ambitious net zero targets. And the same ethos lies behind both the annual, independent assessment of our sustainability, and our commitment as a B Corp to be part of a global movement helping to shape an inclusive, equitable, and regenerative economy.
Not all claims of “green” technology are accurate or substantiated. This blog introduces approaches that can help you cut through the noise and make informed decisions about your organisation’s technology sustainability.
Oliver Cronk
The Scott Logic sustainability team has recently added significant new content to the open-source Technology Carbon Standard. Read more about the changes in this blog.
Katie Davis
This year Scott Logic collaborated with DWP Digital for the Green Software Foundation’s 2024 Carbon Hack. Read about the challenges, processes and contributions of their Object Storage Carbon estimates project.
Matt Griffin
Want to know more about how we could support your organisation's sustainable software ambitions?
Drop us a line to find out how our approach could help.
