How hSo Makes Its Services Green

Here at hSo, we're doing our bit to be green:

Green Electricity in hSo's London Office - Our London office's power, heating, cooling and lighting is powered by green energy. Our supplier buys renewable power and nuclear power, which are added to the grid. Renewable certificates and carbon offsets make amends for any shortfall. 

Green Electricity Powered Data Centres - Almost all our core networking equipment, firewalls and servers are hosted in data centres powered by green electricity. To be more specific, green energy powers our equipment in facilities run by Equinix, Digital Realty, Telehouse, Pulsant, LDeX, Ark, Telstra LHC, RedCentric and Nikhef, except in the event of a power failure requiring the use of backup generators. Those facilities cover all the locations we use to host our cloud hosting and cloud backup services, our customer portal, our staff portal and our customer records system.

Hybrid Working - Following the pandemic, most hSo staff work from home for 2-3 days each week, minimising unnecessary travel. We've introduced hot-desking, so our office space is used efficiently.

Video Conferencing - We now use Microsoft Teams for many internal and external meetings, reducing unnecessary business travel. 

IT Recycling - We reuse what we can and sell or recycle the rest. That applies to equipment for our own use and equipment we buy for customer use.

Hardware Upgrades - We routinely upgrade our networking, hosting and data storage platforms to pre-emptively prepare for the growing aggregate demand from our customers. These upgrades make our systems more power-efficient and space-efficient, reducing cooling requirements.

Digital Workflows, Contracts & Billing - We minimise paper waste by relying on digital records, including our CRM system, our portals, and by encouraging our customers to sign contracts electronically. By default, our invoices go out electronically.

Paper Recycling -  Our London office's waste paper is recycled.  

Server Efficiency - Server virtualisation enables us to consolidate workloads onto fewer, better utilised servers while keeping spare capacity on tap. We also use containers, which let us deploy software without having to replicate the entire OS stack each time. We work with our customers to optimise their virtual private clouds - gently nudging them away from over-speccing that's common on-premises.

ASICs (Application-Specific Integrated Circuits) - For computationally-demanding security scanning, we deploy hardware custom-designed to handle such tasks more efficiently than general-purpose CPUs. For less demanding scanning, we deploy virtual appliances that require no new hardware.

Software PBX, Software Phones - Our primary PBX offering is now software-based, saving customers from having to buy a physical PBX. We offer direct routing for Microsoft Teams, which allows customers to make and receive calls using Microsoft Teams software - without needing to buy physical phones. Our Cloud:PBX and PC/Mac/Android/iOS softphones allow companies to do away with physical PBXs and phones if they wish. 

Digital Backup - Our cloud backup service enables customers to backup their data off-site daily, eliminating the need for couriers to pick up backup media. We also use this system ourselves for our primary backups. 

Infrared Office Occupancy Sensors - These turn off most of our London office's lights when no-one's nearby.

Power-Efficient Laptops - hSo staff mostly work on modern power-efficient laptops. We are phasing out older desktop machines in the office and phasing in laptop docking stations.

ISO 14001 -  We try to get progressively greener and have an environmental management system which is independently audited. We're certified by Alcumus ISOQAR as being in compliance with the requirements of international standard ISO 14001.  

So hSo is doing its bit to be green. We're also helping our customers cut their scope 3 emissions - those generated further along the supply chain.

Most of the steps we've taken above make sense even if you discount the environmental benefit.

Hybrid working and hot-desking allow us to avoid an expensive move to a larger, more expensive office. Digital workflows allow us to do things more easily and more quickly. Video conferencing reduces our travel-related costs and allows meetings to happen at short notice. Software phones have saved us from having to spend a fortune on handsets.

If you're looking to go green, feel free to copy our tactics. 

P.S. If you are still hosting your servers in your office, an easy way to cut your carbon emissions may be to switch to our cloud hosting service, powered by green energy.