Three ways the industrial cloud can help you meet your sustainability goals

Written by Sarah Robson, SaaS & Cloud Product Marketing Manager, AVEVA

Companies from every sector face growing regulatory and consumer pressure to improve their operations with sustainability in mind. While the environmental benefits of decarbonization have long been clear, the economic advantages of participating in the circular economy are coming into sharper focus.

With the right digital tools, industrial enterprises are making progress toward their sustainability goals and adding much-needed measures of agility and resilience to their operations in tandem. By prioritizing the hybrid industrial cloud in their larger decarbonization strategies, industry leaders are meeting their sustainability targets while maximizing IT resources, increasing operational efficiency, and unlocking greater degrees of workforce connectivity.

Among other benefits, adopting industrial cloud solutions can help you meet your sustainability goals in three ways:

• Maximizing IT efficiency and equipment utilization
• Turning data into sustainability insights
• Increasing collaboration and productivity

1. Maximizing IT efficiency and equipment utilization

The cloud has revolutionized many aspects of industrial IT strategy. It has added flexibility to workstreams, and, through new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) models, companies have unlocked greater scalability, elasticity, operational efficiency improvements, and reduced unnecessary expenditures.

It also helps businesses to participate in economies of scale, which in turn delivers sustainability benefits. Before cloud-based technologies became so accessible, organizations stored their information in on-site data centers, which require tremendous IT and energy resources to maintain and operate. Conversely, cloud computing relies on mega-data centers, which are more energy efficient. Mega-data centers often use more renewable energy sources and are optimized for energy-efficient operations.

When you move your operations to the cloud, you pay only for what you need and can minimize hardware and storage requirements – reducing both financial and environmental impacts. Because public cloud servers maximize the usage of their infrastructure, they are two to four times more efficient than private data centers. Maximizing server efficiency improves overall energy efficiency and, as a result, reduces carbon emissions – without sacrificing security.

2. Turning data into sustainability insights

If data is locked in silos or inaccessible, not only are you not getting the most out of your information, but you may be missing valuable insights that can improve your overall operational efficiency–and your sustainability metrics.

With digital twin technology, you can harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to analyze different scenarios and reach your sustainability goals. Digital twin solutions give operators total visibility into plant conditions, helping to track and reduce waste, energy usage, and more. With the advent of the hybrid cloud and SaaS, building, maintaining, and scaling a digital twin across your global enterprise has never been easier.

3. Increasing collaboration and ​productivity

The cloud makes it easier for workers to collaborate and access actionable information, whether they’re working in the same plant or spread across your global network of facilities. When your entire workforce can access and collaborate using the same information and data-driven insights at the same time, efficiency and productivity dramatically improve. For example, when engineers can capture and collaborate on an accurate model representation of the as-built state of a plant, the need for engineering rework declines, driving efficiency gains and reducing material waste.

Embracing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud-based solutions, or taking a hybrid approach, is a critical step for enterprises looking to achieve their sustainability goals, meet regulatory pressures head-on, and improve their customer satisfaction.

Ready to start your cloud journey?

Discover AVEVA™ Connect, our industrial cloud platform. AVEVA Connect provides one central, scalable location for all your industrial, hybrid SaaS applications. Connect disparate systems and processes – from the edge to the cloud and beyond – through our secure cloud platform and unlock insights in real time to accelerate time to value across your digital transformation initiatives