Research Finds SaaS The Greenest Option

NetSuite has today released new research it says proves that cloud computing-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) is not only a cheaper alternative to on-premise software, but a greener one too.

The business management SaaS vendor has always claimed its offerings were kinder to the environment.

But an independent sustainability impact study into the benefits of its platform found it can help cut electricity bills and its associated carbon emissions by more than $10,000 (£6,107) per year.

When added to the overall costs of hardware, software licences, maintenance, support personnel and occupancy, it calculated the cost reductions can exceed $100,000 (£61,107) per year, per customer.

Specialist researcher, Greenspace quantified the savings using its EcoMetrics scorecard review according to the reduction in the power and cooling alone of servers and other, related IT equipment required by on-premise software.

“NetSuite can now fully disclose its sustainability impact and goals, as well as the cloud platform functionality,” stated Greenspace chief executive, Jason Howard.

Toby Davison, NetSuite head of professional services told eWEEK that, with more than 6,000 customer organisations sharing its data centre resources, its platform was saving more than $61 million (£37.3 million) in energy bills or the equivalent of 423 metric tonnes of CO2 per year.

“The cloud and SaaS offer the benefits and economies of scale to enterprises,” he said. “And our customers don’t have to take on separate ERP [enterprise resource planning], CRM [customer relationship management], e-commerce or reporting software, which need even more servers etc. to run, because our software is end-to-end.”

The company said its green credentials were not just based on the nature of its SaaS-based offering. Davidson pointed out that its offerings were also more likely to be more energy efficient than any form of co-location, where the software may not be on-premise, is still owned and managed in-house, NetSuite had worked to maximise the efficiency of the data centre resources it delivers its software from.

The NetSuite data centre incorporates HP servers that have been certified by the US Federal Energy Star programme, allowing it to realise power savings that have benefited both the company and its thousands of customers.

In response to the publication of the research, NetSuite is offering alternative energy industry association members a first-year 50% discount on its full on-demand business suite, as a key part of its ongoing effort to enable the “green economy,” it said. Existing customers signing up under the promotion will receive a 10 percent renewal price cap for subsequent years.