Software Toolbox Technical Blog

Happy belated Earth Day! We hope you took the time on Tuesday to enjoy the great outdoors or made a plan to get outside this weekend. Perhaps you did neither and instead decided to put your reusable water bottle to use instead of grabbing another plastic bottle of water to drink from for the day. Whatever you did, we hope it made you happy because that’s part of what celebrating Earth Day is all about.

In this final post of our 2025 Environmental Sustainability blog series, we’re diving into how industries can make smarter, greener decisions using actionable RESTful web services. I know that may sound like a stretch to connect these things, but keep reading: I’m going to discuss the technology, the data sources that you can consume to impact your sustainability results, and how you can bring them together without writing any code.

While security and ease of project execution are often the focus when discussing remote configuration, they’re just the beginning. In this post for our 2025 Environmental Sustainability blog series, we’re highlighting the environmental benefits as well. Embracing remote configuration not only helps reduce emissions—it also enhances efficiency, sparks innovation, and supports long-term resilience for your business and the planet.

One of the most valuable lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic is that remote work can significantly reduce a company’s carbon emissions and overall environmental footprint. While individuals often concentrate on minimizing their direct emissions, businesses have the potential to drive far greater impact by addressing emissions at scale. True corporate sustainability requires a holistic approach—one that considers the full lifecycle of every product, process, and operation. Software Toolbox offers several secure remote configuration options to help you achieve sustainability goals—featuring solutions like OPC Server Remote Configuration Client, Cogent DataHub, and OPC Router.

When it comes to Earth Day, conversations often center on renewable energy and reducing raw materials—but true sustainability goes far beyond solar panels and recycling bins. One of the most overlooked yet powerful ways to shrink our environmental footprint is by reclaiming something we already have in abundance: waste heat.  

In this second installment of our 2025 Environmental Sustainability blog series, we’re diving into the surprisingly diverse world of heat reclamation—where compost piles, underground aquifers, industrial processes, and even your HVAC system can all become unexpected sources of clean, efficient energy.  

Curious about how this is so? Read on to discover the technologies that turn excess heat into big savings—for both the planet and your wallet.

How a Common Data Infrastructure is Helping Amcor Meet its Net Zero Goals

We are celebrating World Earth Day all month long and recognize that sustainability is not just about using eco-friendly materials — it is about making smarter choices in how we connect, operate, optimize, and innovate. To kick things off, this first blog of this year's Earth Day Series explores how Amcor, a global leader in the packaging industry, is leveraging TOP Server to drive efficiency, improve productivity, and help support its sustainability goals. 

Software Toolbox’s solutions play a pivotal role throughout multiple renewable energy sectors. However, our solutions don't only help with the day-to-day creation of renewable energy but also the supply chains that enable the creation of these energy sources, reducing cost and increasing efficiency across all levels of your business via automation.

Last week, we shared a specific use case of how our software is being used to help reduce waste and energy usage. In this final post of our Environmental Sustainability series, we will explore additional ways our software can be, and has been, used across the entire automation pyramid to reduce waste and increase efficiency. Chances are, this is something you are already very familiar with. But for those of you who are not, the automation pyramid functions as a conceptual blueprint utilized in industrial automation representing the different levels of data transfer necessary for automation. This pyramid likely aligns with the different areas within your business.

Happy early Earth Day! And welcome back to our Environmental Sustainability series, where we explore the pivotal role of innovation in safeguarding our planet. In this third installment, our focus shifts to the chemical industry, where we will explore a compelling case study and uncover the strategies employed by one company to standardize and unify their operations with principles of sustainability.

Through this case study, we will witness firsthand how advancements in technology and strategic decision-making can yield substantial gains in energy efficiency. Join us as we investigate where the pursuit of efficiency intertwines with environmental stewardship.

There is significant growth in companies offloading their applications, data management, files, and content to cloud hosted systems. While this is great for a multitude of reasons, have you wondered what impact that might have on your business reaching its sustainability goals? That's where we have some good news – the cloud can be, and typically is, green, because of the economies of scale that large data centers provide. In this second post of our Environmental Sustainability blog series, we'll look at what cloud providers and data centers are doing, how using cloud computing can help reduce your company's energy usage and carbon footprint, and how Software Toolbox's solutions empower them all.

In this first installment of our 2024 Environmental Sustainability Blog Series, we’re going to piggyback on last year’s Waste Reduction blog post, and take things a step farther – how can you incorporate aspects of a circular economy to positively impact your work environment? In this blog post we’ll discuss what a circular economy is, the impact circular economies have on the environment, and how software that leverages OPC Standards and the automation industry can play a pivotal role in fostering its success.