Alex Matthews, Senior Director, Solution Engineering, Partners & Digital, VMware EMEA
Sustainability is one of the most pressing issues facing society today. Humanity is depleting its natural resources at an unsustainable rate, and, every industry is having to look inwards, and assess whether – and to what extent – they are contributing to the problem.
Consumers and businesses urgently need to come together to redress current practices, as failure to do so will lead to catastrophic outcomes for future generations. We at VMware are fully committed to playing an active role as catalysts of this sustainable change.
But you, our partners, have a huge part to play in achieving those goals too. And that’s why we are doing everything we can to provide you with a platform to deliver technologies that help customers do business in a more sustainable way, and set the standard for others to follow.
One partner that shares our philosophy is Fundaments, a leading Netherlands-based Cloud Services Provider (CSP) that excels at delivering cloud-based projects and initiatives. We recently caught up with Larik-Jan Verschuren-Parchomov, its CTO, to hear how they are already delivering incredible outcomes using VMware technologies. You can watch our conversation here:
Before we hear some of those great stories though, let’s consider the role IT has to play in meeting our environmental goals.
Sustainability: beyond a requirement
Sustainability is no longer just a moral issue, but quickly becoming a regulatory and legislative requirement across the globe. The EU’s Energy efficiency directive, for example, aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030. And that’s before you consider its potential impact on your brand; a lack of green credentials can now dissuade potential customers too, making reduction of carbon footprints a necessity.
“Companies really struggle to gather insights into their energy usage, as we don’t have energy labels like we do with household appliances when it comes to IT,” according to Larik-Jan. CSPs in particular face their most significant challenge in a generation. “From this lack of understanding, things like getting sustainable goals achieved or compliance issues addressed is really challenging.”
IT systems already use around 1-2% of the total global energy demand and in some countries that figure is significantly higher than in the Netherlands. For example, in Ireland IT accounts for 18% of the country’s energy usage. So, the impact IT can have on your carbon footprint can be significant, especially if it isn’t implemented in the right way.
Concerted efforts are under way across the IT industry to turn this around, but more needs to be done. An unsustainable IT environment is incredibly costly, both from an environmental but also a monetary perspective, too.
So, what can partners do?
Building sustainable IT infrastructures is no ‘walk-in-the-park’, as Larik-Jan explained during our chat. “ Every customer has its own landscape,” he noted. “But we do a number of things to gather insights for customers. First of all, we want to get them onboard, so we show them the benefits of mapping out energy, looking at cost-savings and compliance. And secondly, we help customers to gather the actual data from their IT systems to develop insights. From this analysis, we then empower the customer to use energy-efficient IT systems and concepts.”
You, our partners, are an incredibly important piece of the sustainability puzzle; you are perfectly positioned to advise customers on which IT investments will keep them on track with their sustainability and transformation goals.
This is where our VMware’s Zero Carbon Committed initiative comes in. We want to empower you to help customers build efficient, trackable, and compliant IT systems, and the initiative is designed to ensure that by 2030, using VMware Cloud infrastructure, VMware Zero Carbon Committed providers will use 100% renewable energy to power their datacentres, giving customers confidence in the sustainability of their IT. Larik-Jan also noted that the platform plays an important role in empowering Fundaments to achieve its own sustainability objectives, while making it far easier for the firm to help customers build sustainable IT systems.
The role partners can play: Fundaments in focus
We mustn’t forget, however, that every customer’s carbon footprint is different. Fundaments’ work is undoubtedly unique, but it does offer three key learnings that partners can draw on when helping customers embed best practice when it comes to sustainable IT:
- Understand:Helping customers understand the benefits of mapping out their energy usage is a must. Not only to diminish their carbon footprint, but to bring down costs and meet legal and tender requirements.
- Map: Once customers fully comprehend the benefits, the actual process of mapping out their energy usage comes next. Supporting customers on this journey, and having the ability to produce granular data with accurate measurements of how much energy is being consumed by pieces of an IT system, is incredibly important to the credibility of your consultancy.
- Build:Finally, when the data is all collated, it’s time to start building more efficient IT systems, and encouraging customers to embrace technologies that aid sustainability efforts. Fundaments, for instance, is helping its data centre customers build out a huge number of virtual servers, drastically increasing their energy efficiency.
While we like to think of ourselves as sustainability catalysts, we know that our partners are pivotal in enacting the change needed to build a sustainable IT field. We’re excited to work together with you to champion sustainable IT, improve outcomes for customers, and most importantly, change the world for the better.
