As data workloads increase, mitigating the environmental impact of data infrastructure is critical.
Sustainability in the enterprise is no longer just nice to have. Organizations across every industry are prioritizing it and implementing strategies to reduce the carbon footprint of their operations as they acknowledge their own role in curbing the impact of climate change.
IT has a huge opportunity to become the epicenter of these sustainability initiatives. As data workloads increase, mitigating the environmental impact of data infrastructure is critical. Consider: IDC projects that the world will create more than three times the data over the next five years than it did in the previous five. In tandem, the World Economic Forum estimates that digitization generated 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2020.
With astute planning and proper organization, IT teams can work alongside sustainability managers to mitigate the environmental impact of data infrastructure and create more environmental efficiencies across the business. Research by my company has found that 78% of sustainability managers say their company’s leadership is treating sustainability as a priority. And nearly nine out of ten said companies cannot reach sustainability goals without significantly reducing energy usage of technology infrastructure.
Yet there are cultural impediments. Only about half of sustainability managers say their IT team is taking proper considerations around sustainability when making decisions about technology purchases.
Following are six ways companies can work across the enterprise and better engage their IT teams to bolster sustainability efforts and make sustainability core to your technology ethos.
SEEK OUT TECH THAT IS BOTH POWERFUL AND SUSTAINABLE
With sustainability in mind, we all have to solve new challenges and approach business a little bit differently. Adopting solutions and services that are environmentally efficient can actually help to scale and deliver more effective and efficient IT solutions over time. You don’t have to pick between really powerful technology and sustainable technology. There are opportunities to get both in your IT portfolio and beyond.
For the Formula One team Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS, focusing on efficiency without sacrificing power is a big part of its carbon-offset objectives. The current Mercedes F1 engine is over 50% thermally efficient, built with systems that recover and utilize waste energy.
RESET YOUR DATA CENTER MINDSET
It’s essential to get out of the mindset that reliability and cost are the two biggest considerations in the data center. Efficiency and carbon footprint should be core to business decisions. Sustainability means using fewer resources to provide the result you desire and doing it in a way that results in less waste.
Italy-based Elmec Informatica, for example, views sustainable innovation as a business imperative as it serves customers on their digital transformation journeys. When the managed services provider built a new data center, it incorporated sustainable IT from land reclamation to infrastructure design.
CONDUCT A MATERIALITY ASSESSMENT
Getting started can be as simple as conducting a materiality assessment and engaging stakeholders to find out what and how important specific ESG issues are to them. Such assessments can help identify key priority areas intersecting stakeholder engagement and business success.
EXAMINE THE DYNAMIC BETWEEN IT AND SUSTAINABILITY TEAMS
It’s critical for companies that are thinking about their sustainability goals to consider the dynamic between their sustainability program and the IT teams making these buying decisions. Those two teams need to be inextricably linked. The earlier you can get sustainability teams into the conversation, the more impactful your business decisions are going to be. Often, sustainability teams are not brought into the tech purchasing process until after it has already begun.
GET MANAGEMENT BUY-IN BY FOCUSING ON HEARTS AND MINDS
Lack of management buy-in is a common roadblock to IT sustainability efforts. To win their hearts, help leaders understand the potential impact IT decisions can have on climate change and the meaningful difference a sustainable approach to tech can make.
To win their minds, help leaders understand how IT buying decisions can help them reach corporate goals. Your hardware vendors, for example, can provide a Total Cost of Ownership projection that can help management understand the bigger picture, factoring in energy costs and other aspects beyond the physical product.
SITUATE SUSTAINABILITY AT YOUR CORE
Across all of these things, sustainability must become a core part of the ethos at your company. For companies like my own that produce hardware as part of our offering, for example, it’s important to have an intentional approach to design that keeps sustainability front and center. Hardware components can be a big generator of e-waste. We focus on non-disruptive upgrades and look at our hardware and software holistically, so new components can be swapped in and out easily. Your approach to software development should also be considered.
With the appropriate mindset and commitment, it is possible to do the right thing for the environment and continue to innovate.