De duurzame Cloud van Fundaments

What is sustainability?

Tom: ‘Sustainability is of course a broad term, but it's basically everything people and organisations do to leave the smallest possible ecological footprint. In business, for example, it is often associated with corporate social responsibility.

‘Whether Cloud consumes much or little energy has to do with the implementation,’ says Jeroen. Cloud computing is of course a major consumer of power at its core, but it doesn't necessarily have to be the case that because an application is in the Cloud it consumes more power. In fact, I think it is more efficient this way.’

‍

How do sustainability and Cloud converge?

Jeroen: ‘’In my opinion, it's therefore all about efficiency. Deploying server equipment in such a way that it is maximum filled. Furthermore, Cloud is easily scalable and users can easily scale up with their provider. This supplier will then use virtualisation: a technique to divide a server into compartments. Efficiency is therefore a big driver. In the past, a server was deployed specifically for 1 customer; if that customer then cancelled, we no longer had any use for such a server because a new customer would again ask for different specifications. With virtualised resources, this is much easier because the customer asks a usage question and simply wants a VM. We can now reuse servers where it was impossible before.’

‍

‍

What motivates companies to choose a sustainable Cloud?

Tom: ‘Companies naturally look at profitability and by using Cloud solutions they save money: they no longer have to maintain their own data centre or run their own servers. In addition, it is also about a piece of image. If, as a company, you are committed to the environment, you can communicate that. Customers find this important and investors are also more likely to come up to you. Of course, there are also more and more laws and regulations in the environmental field. For example, our data centres have to comply with the European Energy and Efficiency Directive.’

Jeroen: ‘Yes, this means that we have set up every server in our server farm in such a way that it is constantly looking at load and energy to be set against it. This way, energy and demand are always optimally matched. So, those environments are also getting ‘smarter’ to keep up with user peaks.’

‍

‍

What does VMware Zero Carbon Committed signify in this regard?

Tom: ‘Zero Carbon Committed is an initiative of VMware. Through this, they want to get the emissions of VMware products as low as possible. We have joined this initiative and can use VMware's expertise as a result. The ultimate goal is to deliver our services in a climate-neutral way. To participate in this initiative, we had to demonstrate a number of things to VMware. For instance, we had to show that we only use data centres that use green electricity and that we are ISO 14001 certified.’

Jeroen: ‘Yes this 14001 certification is of course often about offices: is waste being separated and how do you deal with lighting. However, we also pay attention to our data centres in this respect, because those are actually the big consumers in our case.’

‍

How can Fundaments become more sustainable?

Jeroen: ‘We naturally buy servers that we deploy in the data centre. In this regard, you can choose how long you are going to use the equipment. The optimal usage period for us is 5 years, but we are looking at whether we can deploy everything for a year longer, so we can use it efficiently here as well.’

Tom: ‘Our company vehicle fleet is also all electric and we have an environmental management system where we try to improve every year. Also, we have an environmental week with the company: for instance, we once cleaned up the park next to our office with all our colleagues. In addition, of course, we have our waste separation and try to use as little paper as possible.

Curious about the trends in sustainability and Cloud: watch Jeroen and Tom's talk show here:

‍