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Green software will become a priority for organizations globally
By Greg Rivera, VP of
CAST
The year 2024 will present a huge opportunity for
organizations to become more sustainable by engineering their software
applications to be more efficient and use fewer resources. The Green Software Foundation reports
that enterprise software applications in modern data centers contribute
approximately 4-5% of global CO2 emissions, roughly equal to the combined
emissions of the air, rail, and shipping industries! Of these emissions, about
85% are attributable to system design, including software engineering, rather
than hardware or infrastructure alone. There will be a huge opportunity for
organizations to become more sustainable by engineering their software
applications to be more efficient and use fewer resources.
Beyond environmental responsibility, greener software
systems often perform better, cost less to operate, and increase resilience -
yielding significant business advantages. With ESG requirements and regulations
growing in importance globally, we predict that green software will become a
top business priority for organizations globally.
How do you make software greener? Software intelligence can
help. Technology that automatically understands the inner workings of custom
software applications and makes recommendations on how to improve the green
impact of software can be immensely insightful. For our part at CAST, we've
developed technology that looks for patterns in application code that are
inefficient and can be implemented in an alternative way.
For example, running a SQL query inside a loop unnecessarily
repeats the data command. By moving the query outside the loop to execute only
as needed, efficiency significantly improves. Imagine this type of thing
happening in a massive enterprise software application or a big public commerce
system with thousands or even millions of users a day. Such changes can
substantially reduce carbon emissions. The change would also likely make the
system perform better and cost less to operate. There are dozens and dozens of
these different types of patterns that we at CAST look for in application code
to make it more efficient.
We're starting to see organizations integrate this kind of
intelligence into their software development processes, looking for
opportunities to make their software greener and more efficient. We're seeing
early adoption, especially in banking and financial services, where the
reliance on software and focus on financial ROI are paramount. We expect
widespread prioritization of green software across industries by 2024.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Greg Rivera is VP of
CAST Highlight. The CAST SaaS platform helps customers and partners accelerate
app modernization / cloud migration, rationalize their app portfolios, and
reduce open source risk. https://www.castsoftware.com/