VDI: An option to lowering your businesses digital waste?

By using a VDI rather than a physical PC or laptop, organisations can experience significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and electronic waste, as well as lowering costs, increasing efficiency / scalability, and improving security. Obviously, this is dependent on factors such as implementation and the use case of the VDI, by optimising the VDI configurations to reduce energy consumption, the associated carbon footprint can be reduced. The number of virtual desktops being used, the hardware, and software can all impact the reduction in emissions achieved using a VDI. Configurations such as RAM, graphics memory, storage and availability can all affect greenhouse gas emissions indirectly, caused by the energy consumption of the underlying hardware infrastructure. Higher specifications would require more energy to power and cool the servers running the VDI, potentially leading to higher greenhouse gas emissions from the data centre. Availability requirements can also impact energy consumption if they necessitate higher levels of redundancy and resources, which could increase energy use and emissions produced. Emission savings may also be subject to change depending on the geographical region of deployment depending on the local carbon intensity figure.

The benefit of a VDI is that it separates the fundamental operating system, applications and hardware from an end user’s device and moves these components into one centralised server, from which many desktops can be hosted, allowing businesses to significantly reduce their number of physical laptops. This not only helps to reduce the amount of energy required to power these devices, but also significantly reduces the amount of hardware needing to be manufactured, transported, and disposed of (see table above). Once deployed, desktop virtualisation solutions provide more efficient management and maintenance capabilities and allow easy rollouts of new software and patches remotely. VDI’s hardware can be remotely customised to accommodate these patches whereas traditional PC upgrades and repairs require more transportation and resources. A single VDI’s usage can typically span 8-10 years compared to the 3-4 years of a conventional PC, prolonging the cycle of e-waste from manufacturing through to disposal. Laptops typically weigh about 3 kilograms and are disposed of in landfills at the end of their lifecycle. Desktop virtualisation devices such as thin clients can weigh as little as 150 grams. Do the maths on this – over 90% waste reduction!

Overall, calculations suggest that the use of VDI’s can help a 1000 employee business to reduce their digital carbon footprint by approximately 41.5 Tonnes of CO2 every year and minimise the environmental impact of their operations. By optimising energy consumption, reducing hardware requirements, and improving the management and maintenance of IT systems, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure can help contribute to a more sustainable future.

Wavestone is committed to working towards this greener future alongside its clients, supporting them across a host of sustainable capabilities, such as sourcing, technology architecture, change delivery, and operating models, all whilst ensuring security, reliability, scalability, and reduced emissions.

If you wish to learn more about how the figures in the table above were derived, please reach out to us.