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Bad software will soon incur fines (and rightly so)
Most companies are busy with the energy transition. Solar panels on the roof, electric cars in the parking lot, LED lighting in the office - all visible and truly sustainable. But behind the scenes, deep inside the servers and applications that keep our businesses running, energy consumption continues unabated. Literally. IT is one of the biggest blind spots when it comes to sustainability.
And that's about to change. Soon.
Starting this year, the European Union requires larger companies to report on their sustainability performance. And yes, that includes IT. You too must be able to show how sustainable your IT works. Not only your infrastructure (think: data centers), but also your software use and data traffic will come under a magnifying glass.
And who cannot demonstrate that their IT is sustainable enough? They risk legal and financial consequences. Because bad software not only becomes expensive - it also becomes a risk in your annual report. And ultimately: a violation of laws and regulations. The time of non-committal optimization is therefore over.
And that is much needed. Because for decades, ‘build as fast as possible’ was the motto in software land. The result: cumbersome applications, inefficient queries, and data streams that guzzle enormous amounts of energy - often without anyone noticing. Much software can be written 100 to 1,000 times more efficiently. Not a little more economical, in other words, but radically less taxing on people, machines and the environment.
At a customer with a slow data warehouse, we saw it in action. A process was reading the exact same - huge - table from disk 110 times. The table didn't fit in memory and the software wasn't built to work smarter. One small tweak brought that down from 110 times to 1 read. Result: 110 times less disk usage, 99% less energy consumption ánd 1700 people who could start their work hours earlier.
Sustainability in IT is no longer a nice-to-have. It's a must. For your reporting. For your budget. For the planet.
Sustainability in IT is no longer a nice-to-have. It's a must. For your reporting. For your budget. For the planet.
We have become accustomed to it: software that is too slow, too expensive and too complex. As if it comes with the territory. As if nothing better is possible. But in almost all other sectors, we have long since stopped taking it!
Imagine: your car is still only running 1 kilometer on 1 liter of gasoline. You would drive it back to the garage today. But in IT, we accept it on a daily basis. Software that reacts slowly, systems that run for hours at night for reports, applications that only stay upright with a little effort.
And in the meantime, emissions and bills mount. Sorry?
Inefficient software is not only frustrating and expensive. It is also simply unsustainable. Every unnecessary disk action, unnecessary calculation or poorly written code translates to energy consumption. And thus to carbon emissions. But because those emissions come not from a tailpipe, but from a power plant far away, we don't notice it. Or rather, we choose to ignore it.
In recent decades, speed was leading: get a working system up and running as quickly as possible. But that race against time has saddled us with a digital infrastructure that is anything but efficient.
The law now forces us to look though. To do things differently. It's about time.
We're stretched to the limit - better software is more urgent than better hardware
For years we leaned on Moore's Law: every 18 to 24 months, the computing power of chips doubled. Efficient programming? No need. You just waited for the next generation of hardware and everything got faster by itself.
Those days will be over very soon.
The latest high-tech chips have conductors 2 nanometers wide. That's so small, only 9 silicon atoms fit in one nanometer. We are approaching the limits of physics. We are literally running out of atoms.
Moore's law is faltering. And even if the law continues for a while, at most it will produce a doubling every few years. But that's nothing compared to what's possible with better software.
Because a lot of software is not a little inefficient, but absurdly cumbersome. Not 10%, but 100 to 1000 times slower than necessary. And therefore 100 to 1000 times more energy-intensive than necessary. This is not due to ignorance or laziness, or bad intentions, but to years of focus on speed of delivery and development costs. Efficiency was never really on the agenda.
But now it must be. The biggest gains are in the code. In smarter programming. In software that not only works, but also runs cleanly.
Those who optimize now are not behind - but far ahead.
For 15 years, we've hunted for invisible waste in software
At Sciante, we've been doing this for 15 years: hunting for software waste. Not the bugs everyone sees, but the silent slurpers under the hood. Logic that is repeated unnecessarily, queries that exhaust your databases and applications that run as if power is free.
We make visible where things really go wrong. And we solve it. Sometimes with a small adjustment in the code, sometimes with a structural rebuild. Always with the same goal: running faster, cheaper and more sustainable.
As a result, our customers save on IT costs, energy costs, time and frustration. This is no longer a luxury, but pure necessity. Sustainability is no longer a choice but an obligation.
Efficient software is not a luxury. It is the future.
Ready to make your IT cheaper and more sustainable?
Do you also want to get rid of software that costs more than it should - in money, energy and patience? And avoid a fine early on?
Then let's make a non-binding appointment. In a short conversation, I will map out with you the biggest opportunities for improvement. No sales talk, but a sharp look at your situation. So that you know exactly where you stand and what is possible.
Working more efficiently starts with insight. All you have to do is make the first push.