IT services can help organizations achieve their sustainability goals | Informatic direction

2023-04-25 17:26:01

Sustainability goals cannot be achieved without drastically reducing the energy consumption of technology infrastructure, a study by Pure Storage reveals.

Pure Storage, an American technology company that develops all-flash data storage hardware and software products, has partnered with Wakefield Research to survey more than 1,000 sustainability leaders in the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany.

The study Drivers of Change: Pure Storage IT Sustainability Impact Survey 2022 revealed that 86% of sustainability program managers believe that companies cannot achieve their sustainability goals without reducing energy consumption within technology in organizations.

In fact, this problem may be getting worse, with 81% predicting that the impact of technology infrastructure on a company’s carbon footprint will increase over the next 12 months.

Respondents indicated that their company’s management views sustainability initiatives as a priority, with the majority expecting to achieve their sustainability goals within three to seven years. However, only half of respondents say they are on track to achieve their goals.

The survey found that while organizations have sustainability initiatives and make it a priority, most investments in this area do not include the environmental inefficiencies found in IT.

Just under 35% of organizations said their IT departments were not taking the necessary steps to support their sustainability initiatives, compared to other groups within the company.

The report also revealed that digital transformation has encouraged IT professionals to prioritize reducing their carbon footprint, however, they are not choosing the right solutions that support data storage capacity and minimize simultaneously the environmental impact. According to the World Economic Forum, digitalization is estimated to have generated 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2020. By 2025, it is predicted that data generation might double globally compared to 97 zettabytes (97 trillion gigabytes) current.

Solving this problem starts with addressing the unsustainable environmental impact of inefficient technology. But nearly 60% say IT infrastructure sustainability is likely to be overlooked in the vendor selection process, and 64% of sustainability managers noted that they have only been involved in IT strategy an organization only following the technology purchasing process has begun.

The Pure Storage report offers solutions to this problem to create a sustainable technology infrastructure. For starters, sustainability initiatives should be at the forefront of IT decision makers’ supply chain decisions and operations, respondents said.

Respondents added that such practices would be beneficial in several ways:

• 50% say it would make it easier to communicate between IT teams and sustainability program teams.
• 47% agree it would make reporting easier.
• 46% agree it would prevent the use of potentially harmful technologies or practices.
• 46% say it would ensure alignment of IT with the Sustainable Development Goals.

Finally, all respondents surveyed said there were many benefits to getting feedback from sustainability leaders earlier in the IT planning process.

The original article is available at IT World Canadaa sister publication of Informatic direction.

French adaptation and translation by Renaud Larue-Langlois.

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