Sustainability in IT operations and data centers has become one of the main challenges that companies face. Being sustainable makes it easier for companies to minimize their carbon footprint, reduce their costs, increase their productivity and improve their brand image among consumers who are increasingly concerned about the future of the planet. However, to be sustainable in an effective and sustained way over time, it is essential to have the right partner.
One of those partners is VMware, a technology company with which on January 25 we organized the webinar “How VMware helps you reduce your environmental impact” and which we encourage you to attend if you are interested in discovering what practices make it easier for your organization to be more sustainable. Before the online meeting is held, we warm up our engines by interviewing Luis Altes (Senior Business Solutions Strategist of VMware) one of the experts who will participate in the webinar and who gives us some more than interesting headlines about what we will talk about in a few weeks.
[MCPRO] What weight do sustainability policies currently have in companies?
[Lluis Altes] We have been talking about ESG in general and sustainability in particular for years, but it is now when we see that everything is accelerating. The current energy crisis is likely to have a pandemic-like accelerating effect with teleworking. The time for major environmental commitments by senior management is giving way to responding with concrete and measurable actions to achieve those commitments. Sustainability policies have increasing weight because they are critical to our future.
[MCPRO] How has your perception changed in recent years? And how has consumer perception changed?
[Lluis Altes] There is increasing awareness and there are more and more leaders who are clear that economic, social and environmental benefits must be generated. It is clear that companies are there to make money, but the big difference is that this is no longer enough to have the approval of customers and markets.
Companies, governments and citizens are immersed in an evolution in which our survival is at stake. As with all of today’s great challenges, technology has a great opportunity to be part of the solution. Consider, for example, that the energy consumed by networks and data centers is greater than that consumed by Germany. This implies that, although it seems that our impact is small, the sum is huge.
[MCPRO] What role do you think technology plays right now in the transition towards a more sustainable future? Does sustainability go beyond Green IT?
[Lluis Altes] Technology plays a fundamental role. It is important that we understand that we are facing one of the most complex challenges in human history and that we cannot solve it alone. At VMware we have always been pioneers in everything related to using technology for the common good and now we are further promoting everything related to co-innovation with our customers and partners.
Answering the second part of the question, without a doubt, sustainability goes far beyond Green IT. You have to consider all possible angles and not rule out any, even if you have to prioritize. Hot topics like Sustainable IT, eWaste, or sustainable software development come to mind, with the goal of increasing overall application efficiency and reducing space and power consumption requirements.
[MCPRO] How can technology companies help reduce the carbon footprint and energy consumption of their customers?
[Lluis Altes] At VMware Explore, our CTO, Kit Colbert, stressed that we must accelerate energy transformation. To the aforementioned importance of networks and data centers in energy consumption (211% growth expected until 2030), we must add the predictions that indicate that the total demand for energy based on ICT will grow by 60% in the same period. time frame. This is totally unsustainable.
We know that our industry has done incredible work to improve the world in the past. I have no doubt that together — customers, suppliers and governments — we have an opportunity to make a difference in this dire landscape and have a positive impact on energy problems in the short term.
[MCPRO] What initiatives and strategies is VMware implementing to reduce its environmental impact and promote the sustainability of the technology industry? What is your Zero Carbon Committed commitment and how is it developing?
[Lluis Altes] We have a very strong commitment to the ESG criteria that are summarized in our 2030 Agenda. In it we define 30 objectives around sustainability, equity and trust.
VMware’s Zero Carbon Committed initiative is a great example of the multiplier effect of co-innovating. Providers that are part of this program earn the Cloud Verified label because they have set goals to power their data centers with 100% renewable energy or achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2030.
A critical piece of achieving this is running data center environments more efficiently, using the full suite of virtualized compute, storage, and networking that make up VMware’s software-defined data center infrastructure. Imagine a customer looking for a cloud provider that prioritizes carbon and energy reduction, or is a cloud provider that wants to commit very publicly to reducing energy consumption; It is clear that being part of the Zero Carbon Committed is a good start.
[MCPRO] What are some of the most innovative and effective solutions you have seen to promote technological sustainability in the industry?
[Lluis Altes] Adoption of our multi-cloud suite of solutions helps our clients on their path to sustainability. These solutions allow customers to achieve higher utilization; consolidate and further reduce computing, storage and network infrastructure; facilitate server upgrades and migrations to more efficient servers and data centers, and facilitate data center consolidations; significantly reduce business continuity and disaster recovery infrastructure; and take advantage of public cloud solutions powered by renewable energy.
Along the lines of working side by side with our clients and partners, I can tell you about some truly inspiring projects. Not only because of the sustainability value proposition, but also because they are projects in production. We worked with a leading telecommunications provider in Europe to move part of their virtual machines from vSphere to VMware Cloud Foundation. With this, they are managing to reduce their carbon footprint by between 20% and 30% thanks to improving VM density and reducing network and storage infrastructure.
Hypervisors are another interesting use case because they enable energy savings through compute lifecycle management. By turning off resources when they’re not needed, consolidate workloads onto fewer resources as they age, and make resources last longer through dynamic lifecycle management.
[MCPRO] What role should public administrations play to encourage companies to be more sustainable?
[Lluis Altes] Public administrations are playing a fundamental role in this transformation with their double role as legislator and user of technology. On the one hand, since these are issues that are still being regulated, their decisions are essential for the promises to be fulfilled. For this, it is essential to define regulatory frameworks where it is clear what should be measured and how. Right now we are experiencing a debate about what should be included in the definition of the supply chain, something not trivial when there are companies that have several thousand suppliers.
On the other hand, the different administrations have to be a catalyst for ESG digital convergence throughout the business fabric, from large corporations to SMEs. For this reason, it is very important that they continue to modernize their infrastructures and applications to provide public employees with secure hybrid workspaces and offer first-class services to citizens and companies.
How VMware helps you reduce your environmental impact
On January 25th we will celebrate our live webinar “How Vmware helps you reduce your environmental impact” and in which you will discover from the best VMware experts why technological sustainability is important, what initiatives and strategies the company is implementing. company to reduce its environmental impact and how you can use its technology to reduce your company’s carbon footprint. In this webinar you will discover:
- What is technological sustainability and why is it important for companies.
- What practices favor technological sustainability and what are the main challenges they have to overcome
the companies. - How VMware has become a champion of sustainability: Zero Carbon commitment.
- How VMware technology can help you make your business more sustainable.
