By being sustainable, companies can be more profitable and the two are not mutually exclusive.
So says Anton Jooste, solution executive at Dimension Data, Middle East and Africa, who notes that that too many organisations believe the two are mutually exclusive. He believes that this mindset will take time to change.
"If you think of all the corporate social investments in South Africa, people are doing well and through that they aim to make money," he says.
Jooste points out that sustainability is more real in aspects like reducing travel. He believes that organisations can reduce travel using solutions like collaborative applications, and converged communications, such as voice and video, managed services for video.
"We believe that we can reduce enterprise travel expenses, reduce their carbon footprint, which makes the organisation more efficient. By driving a sustainability agenda around travel in particular, organisations can become more profitable."
Emphasising the current electricity cost and considering how high it is, he says, if companies can reduce their electricity bill, they can be more profitable.
Data centres for IT departments are large consumers of electricity, almost a 100 times more than a traditional office does, he notes, adding that if organisations are not paying attention to the energy an IT department or a data centre consumes, they're being irresponsible, ending up costing companies tremendous amounts of energy.
"Now the solutions we bring, like virtualisation, ensuring that enterprise cooling and power utilisation in data centres is right, help drive down energy usage," he says.
Jooste is of the view that inefficient use of air conditioning is one of the biggest culprits in high energy usage.
He explains that data centres and IT departments need air conditioning, as they cannot run their systems without it. If organisations can get their air conditioners to be more efficient, they end up using less energy, reducing bills, ultimately reducing costs therefore increases profit, he adds.
"I don't believe sustainability and profit are mutually exclusive. I believe that a well thought-out sustainability strategy will make companies more profitable," concludes Jooste.
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