Feb 6, 2023 | IT Thought Leadership Software Is Again the Next Frontier, But This Time It’s to Help Save the Planet…

Green Software Insights, a first-of-a-kind technology that automatically analyzes application source code for green impact.

Remember the first time software was the ‘new frontier’ in IT?

I’ve spent most of my 25+ year career in the technology industry and have always enjoyed stories of the early days of the commercial software industry. As a former 10 year Microsoft veteran, the history of the company fascinated me. In the early 1970s, Microsoft entered the Information Technology (IT) industry and was a driving force in helping establish software as the new frontier in enterprise IT. History now appears to be repeating itself a bit as we see the evolution of sustainable technology initiatives and the first-of-a-kind automated green software insights capability introduced in the latest release of CAST Highlight.

In the early days of Microsoft, Bill Gates and Paul Allen were negotiating partnerships with personal computer manufacturers and decided on a novel approach to license their software. Believing that most value was in hardware, IBM took the licensing model which they believed afforded more attractive economics. And we all know how that played out. Microsoft is now the largest software maker in the world and, as of this writing, they are the 2nd most valuable company globally with a market capitalization of almost $2 trillion. Clearly, licensing their software back in 1980 appears to have been a good decision as it helped establish the commercial software industry as the new frontier of IT. We are now seeing a very similar story play out again with software as the new frontier; but this time it is occurring in the realm of sustainable technology and how IT can have a better impact on the environment.

Green software – the next frontier in IT sustainability

A lot of work has already been done to help make technology more sustainable and reduce carbon emissions. However, most of this effort has been focused on optimizing the impact on the environment of hardware and IT infrastructure. What’s the next frontier? Software.

According to Accenture, 85% of carbon emissions generated by running enterprise software systems can be impacted by application design & development. Moreover, software data centers are now responsible for 3% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions putting it on par with the airline industry, according to the Green Software Foundation. Green software development is the next logical step for organizations globally to make their IT landscape more sustainable, consume less energy, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Automated Green Software Insights in CAST Highlight

In the latest product release of CAST Highlight, we have introduced automated Green Software Insights, a first-of-a-kind technology that automatically analyzes application source code for green impact, giving organizations a holistic understanding of opportunities to reduce software energy consumption. This capability can pinpoint where and how the software source code can be changed to make it more sustainable. For example, an application using SQL queries inside a loop consumes more CPU cycles (energy) than one where the loop logic is coded inside the query. CAST technology automatically extracts this type of intelligence from the source code and suggests how to make it more sustainable.

By plugging directly into source code repositories and analyzing applications in minutes, CAST Highlight identifies software code patterns or “green deficiencies” that waste resources and can be optimized with design and development changes. The outcome is lower energy consumption and lower greenhouse gas emissions, with the additional benefits of more economical, resilient, and performant software. Ultimately, we are helping organizations tackle the aforementioned next frontier of sustainable IT -- software.

And, as part of this launch, CAST will donate 10% of revenue from Green Software Insights to non-profit organizations supporting sustainability research and addressing human-caused global warming.

Read on below for all the new capabilities included in the Winter 2023 product release of CAST Highlight:

What’s new in CAST Highlight?

Green Software insights Make your software more sustainable while supporting emerging regulatory requirements with the new Green Software insights in CAST Highlight. Automated Green Software insights include the Green Impact score available at both the portfolio and application levels, the Portfolio Advisor for Green, identified code deficiency patterns that contribute to excess resource utilization & energy consumption, and Green Impact trends to monitor progress. These insights are enhanced with a new Green Impact survey and they are supported for major programming languages (Java, C#, JavaScript, TypeScript, C/C++, PL/SQL, T-SQL, Scala, Clojure, etc.). See how the feature works CloudReady Application Advisor Speed up your migration planning when moving applications to a specific cloud service provider or when moving from one provider to another (cloud to cloud planning). The new CloudReady Application Advisor in CAST Highlight consolidates CloudReady insights in a single screen based on the specific migration scenario (migration from/to AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud). See how the feature works Visual Studio Code extension for SCA Shift left open source risks to address them earlier in the development cycle with the new CAST Highlight VS Code extension for SCA. Developers can now view Open Source risks such as security vulnerabilities or license issues directly in their IDE. See how the feature works SCA – Advanced Snapshot Comparison Address newly introduced open source risks faster with the new Advanced Snapshot Comparison capabilities for SCA in CAST Highlight. The snapshot comparison screen now identifies which specific OSS components were added, removed or upgraded between two scans and how this impacts Open Source Safety. See how the feature works Many other feature improvements The product team also took the opportunity with this new release to introduce many additional capabilities such as: automated scan of archive files via the CLI, support of .properties files for automated scan options … and much more. Useful Resources to Get Started The CAST Highlight team has developed very useful resources to help you onboard applications, operate automation and API tools, and leverage our software analytics within your organization. Visit the Product Tutorial page.