Is Software as a Service (SaaS) a sustainable option?

Your on-premise servers are burning cash. Worse, they're burning fossil fuels 64% of the time when nobody's using them.

That's not an environmental talking point. It's a straightforward business problem that affects your bottom line, your operational resilience, and your progress toward net-zero commitments.

Here's what most housing associations don't realise: those computer rooms that seemed sensible ten years ago now represent one of the clearest examples of wasted capital in your organisation. You're powering, cooling, and maintaining equipment that sits idle most of the week whilst your Board sets ambitious decarbonisation targets.

The Cost of Running Your Own Computer Equipment

Your servers run 24/7 whether your business needs them or not. Consider what that means in practice:

Your working week is Monday to Friday, 8am to 8pm. That's 36% of the total hours available. The other 64% of the time, your servers are powered up, consuming energy, generating heat that needs cooling, and achieving precisely nothing.

Take a typical mid-sized housing association running ten servers plus storage and networking equipment. The total cost runs around £180,000 annually. That's £115,200 spent powering equipment when there's minimal or no demand for it.

The environmental impact is equally wasteful. The average setup generates approximately 100 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year. That's enough to power 65 homes or what 5,000 trees would absorb in a year. Two-thirds of that environmental impact happens outside your working hours.

Based on typical running costs for ten servers plus storage and switches. CO2 calculations based on standard server energy consumption.

This isn't about environmental credentials. It's about operational efficiency, financial sense, and meeting the sustainability commitments your Board has made.

What Cloud Services Actually Deliver

Cloud providers run massive data centres where computer resources are shared across thousands of customers. Microsoft Azure has been carbon neutral since 2012. They've even experimented with underwater data centres to reduce cooling requirements.

The economics are straightforward. When your UK organisation is asleep, your cloud resources are serving businesses in other time zones. When you need extra capacity during peak periods, you scale up. When you don't, you scale down. You pay for what you use.

Compare that to your current setup where you've sized your computer room for peak demand but pay for it continuously, whether you're using it or not.

Cloud services form a fundamental part of your environmental strategy, value for money planning, decarbonisation and net-zero targets, business resilience, disaster recovery, and security strategy.

The Business Case Beyond Cost

Moving to the cloud delivers several advantages that running your own equipment simply can't match:

Business continuity that actually works. Microsoft's disaster recovery capabilities mean you're back online in hours, not days or weeks. Your current backup strategy might look thorough on paper, but have you tested it recently?

Security at scale. Azure delivers enterprise-grade security that would cost millions to replicate yourself. You get the benefit of Microsoft's multi-billion pound security investment for a fraction of the cost.

Predictable monthly costs instead of surprise capital expenditure when hardware fails. No more emergency budget requests because a server has died at the worst possible moment.

Remote Working Without Compromise

Hybrid working arrangements are now permanent for most organisations. Cloud services make that possible without security compromises or productivity losses.

Your team can access systems from anywhere with proper permissions. Collaboration happens in real time rather than through endless email attachments. Data synchronisation issues become a thing of the past.

Housing associations are using Microsoft 365 and Teams to enable effective hybrid working whilst maintaining security. The tools integrate seamlessly with cloud infrastructure to support both office-based and remote staff.

The reduction in commuting delivers environmental benefits, though these are partially offset by increased home energy consumption. Overall, the impact remains substantially positive even with partial office returns.

Making Migration Work

Moving to cloud isn't simply a technology project. It requires careful planning and execution to avoid disruption.

Honeycomb Group migrated 80+ physical servers to the cloud, enabling proper remote working capabilities that their previous setup couldn't support. The key was phased implementation that minimised disruption whilst delivering immediate benefits.

Flame Homeware eliminated 15-minute boot times every morning and ongoing maintenance headaches by moving their financial software to the cloud. Most work happened out of hours with only half a day of downtime.

The pattern is consistent: proper planning, phased execution, minimal disruption, immediate benefits.

Power Management and Practical Steps

Even if you're not ready for full cloud migration, some quick wins are available:

Configure your computers to turn off displays and go to sleep after 10 minutes of idle time. Set power settings to 'balanced' rather than 'high-performance'. This small change, multiplied across hundreds of devices, makes a material difference to energy consumption. Communicate this across your entire organisation and you'll see the impact in both power bills and environmental metrics.

Check your organisation's disposal arrangements for old equipment. WEEE compliance (Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment) ensures kit doesn't end up in landfill. Ask uncomfortable questions about where your old monitors and servers actually go. Do you have confidence that your disposal processes meet environmental standards?

Digitising document management also reduces your environmental footprint by eliminating paper-based processes whilst improving efficiency and compliance.

Review your vehicle fleet. Have you evaluated electric options and calculated the costs and benefits? Do you have charging points for staff and visitors to use free of charge? These decisions should happen at Board or Executive level, not as afterthoughts.

Consider how you can maximise environmental impact through your employees and suppliers. Do your working practices and expectations promote sustainability? Do you put contractual or tender obligations in place that extend your sustainability policy across your supply chain? Your spending power can incentivise green behaviours throughout your supplier base.

When purchasing computer equipment, is low power consumption part of your selection criteria? Do you insist suppliers have ISO14001 certification and Environmental Management Plans to qualify for your tenders?

ISO14001, Decarbonisation and Net-Zero

ISO14001 certification is becoming standard in the housing sector, and for good reason. It provides a suite of practical tools, policies, and standards that enable you to implement an effective environmental management system.

Even without full certification, following documented best practices gives you a solid starting point. Certification provides external assurance to your Board and demonstrates to stakeholders that you live your policy commitments and meet mature standards.

ISO14001 is becoming the tool of choice for housing associations managing environmental issues within their strategic planning framework. It requires clear environmental strategy backed by strong leadership. The standard aims to protect the environment, conserve resources whilst regulating demand, and maximise environmental benefits with clearly agreed performance targets and metrics.

It encourages lifecycle thinking across acquisition, utilisation, and disposal of assets that affect the environment. It pushes you to move from paper to digital and embrace cloud services.

ISO14001 is a solid foundation for organisations considering their strategic journey to net-zero. 2050 seems distant, but new builds are one thing whilst retrofitting existing homes will prove the biggest and most expensive challenge you face.

Sustainability Bonds and Sector Leadership

We're seeing encouraging developments across the housing sector. Various Heads of Sustainability are being appointed across leading housing associations. One G15 organisation recently issued its first £250 million sustainability bond.

This is extremely positive. It demonstrates that environmental management is moving from aspiration to action, with serious capital commitment behind decarbonisation programmes.

Your computer systems should feature prominently in these programmes. The business case is clear, the environmental benefits are substantial, and the technology is proven. Digitising the tenant experience through cloud-based services delivers both operational and environmental benefits.

What Moving to Cloud Requires

Your migration strategy needs to address several key areas:

Assessment of what moves to cloud, what stays in-house, and what gets retired entirely. Most organisations discover they're running old systems that nobody uses anymore.

Planning to ensure business continuity during the transition. Your team can't stop working while you move systems.

Security setup that matches or exceeds your current arrangements. TSG Cyber Care provides continuous monitoring and incident response that most internal teams can't match. Staying secure with Microsoft 365 requires proper configuration and ongoing management.

Ongoing monitoring to ensure you're not overpaying for resources. TSG Cloud Care watches your cloud consumption and identifies opportunities to align resources with actual business need.

Training and support so your team can work effectively with new systems. The technology only delivers value if people use it properly.

Strategic Questions for Your Board

Your Board should be asking:

Do you know how much energy you use to run your computer room? Do you have a plan to reduce this over time with clear, transparent targets visible to the Board?

Do you have an appointed Board member who owns sustainability targets, leads on this subject, and champions the sustainability portfolio?

Have you considered how a cloud-first approach locks in both cashable and non-cashable benefits? Are sustainability considerations fully embedded in your business cases?

Is power management on your computers and laptops properly configured? When you purchase equipment, is low power consumption part of your selection criteria?

Making the Decision

Moving to cloud isn't a technology project. It's a strategic decision that affects your operational resilience, financial planning, environmental impact, and ability to meet net-zero commitments.

The capital tied up in your computer room could be deployed more productively elsewhere in your organisation, potentially on housing stock improvements or tenant services. The ongoing maintenance overhead consumes resources that could focus on projects that drive better outcomes for residents.

The environmental benefits are substantial and directly support your decarbonisation strategy. You move to cloud because it makes financial and operational sense whilst simultaneously advancing your sustainability agenda.

Decarbonisation and net-zero often start with discussions around property assets. That's appropriate given the scale of the challenge. But there's an opportunity to widen the sustainability conversation within an overarching environmental management system, and your computer room represents clear low-hanging fruit.

Your Board should be asking whether maintaining your own computer equipment still makes sense given the alternatives now available and the sustainability commitments you've made. In most cases, the answer is no.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the main cost savings from moving to cloud?

Cost savings come from three sources: eliminating hardware replacement cycles every 3-5 years, reducing energy consumption and cooling costs by approximately 64%, and paying only for resources you actually use rather than maintaining capacity for peak demand. Housing associations typically reduce support costs because managed cloud providers handle routine maintenance and updates.

How does cloud migration support our net-zero commitments?

Cloud providers operate massive data centres far more efficiently than individual computer rooms. Microsoft Azure has been carbon neutral since 2012. Your current setup generates approximately 100 tonnes of CO2 annually, with 64% of that waste occurring outside working hours. Cloud migration eliminates this waste and provides measurable progress toward decarbonisation targets.

Will moving to cloud disrupt our housing management operations?

Properly planned migrations minimise disruption through phased implementation and out-of-hours work. Most systems move with minimal downtime, often just hours rather than days. Critical housing management systems can run alongside cloud systems during transition periods to ensure service continuity for residents. The key is thorough planning and realistic timescales.

What happens to our data security in the cloud?

Cloud providers like Microsoft Azure deliver enterprise-grade security with continuous monitoring, automatic updates, and compliance certifications that would cost millions to implement yourself. Your data is encrypted both when it's stored and when it's moving between locations. The security question isn't whether cloud is secure but whether your current setup matches what cloud providers offer.

How does ISO14001 relate to cloud strategy?

ISO14001 encourages lifecycle thinking across how you acquire, use, and dispose of your computer equipment. It pushes organisations to move from paper to digital and embrace cloud services as part of environmental strategy. Cloud migration supports ISO14001 certification by demonstrating measurable environmental improvements with clear targets and transparent reporting.

Can we migrate some systems whilst keeping others in-house?

Hybrid approaches work well for organisations with specific requirements. You might move most systems to cloud whilst keeping certain applications local for performance or compliance reasons. The key is having a clear strategy for what goes where and why, ensuring decisions align with both operational needs and sustainability commitments.