VMware and Fundaments: creating sustainable IT infrastructures

Published by VMware

Sustainability is one of the most pressing issues in our society today. Humans are depleting their natural resources at an unsustainable rate and every industry must look inward and assess whether - and to what extent - they are contributing to this problem.

Consumers and businesses urgently need to join hands to restore the status quo, as failure to do so will have catastrophic consequences for future generations. At VMware, we are fully committed to playing an active role as a catalyst for this sustainable change.

But our partners also play a major role in achieving these goals. And so we are committed to providing them with a platform to deliver technologies that help customers do business in a more sustainable way. In doing so, we set the standard for others to follow.

One partner that shares our philosophy is Fundaments, a leading Cloud Services Provider (CSP) from the Netherlands that excels in delivering Cloud-based projects and initiatives. We recently spoke to Larik-Jan Verschuren-Parchomov to hear how they are already achieving great results using VMware technologies. Our conversation can be viewed here:

Before we hear some of these stories, let's look at the role IT needs to take in achieving our environmental goals.

‍

Sustainability: more than a requirement

‍Sustainability is no longer just a moral issue, but is rapidly becoming a regulatory and legislative requirement around the world. The EU's energy efficiency directive, for example, aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with at least 55% by 2030.

'Companies are really struggling to understand their energy consumption because in IT we don't have energy labels as we do for household appliances,’ Larik-Jan says. CSPs in particular face the biggest challenge in a generation. ‘Because of this ignorance, things like achieving targets around sustainability or addressing compliance issues are a real challenge,’ he says.

‘IT systems already use around 1-2% of total global energy demand and in some countries that figure is significantly higher than in the Netherlands. In Ireland, for example, IT accounts for 18% of energy consumption. So, the impact that IT can have on your carbon footprint can be significant, especially if it is not implemented in the right way.

There are concerted efforts across the IT sector to stem this tide, but there is more that needs to be done. An unsustainable IT environment is incredibly costly, both from an environmental and monetary perspective.

‍

‍

What can partners do?

Building sustainable IT infrastructures is not a walk-in-the-park, as Larik-Jan was explaining during the conversation. ‘Every customer has their own landscape,’ he noted. ‘’However, we do a number of things to gather insights for our customers. Firstly, we show them the benefits of energy mapping, looking at cost savings and compliance. And secondly, we help customers collect actual data from their IT systems to develop insights. Based on this analysis, we then enable customers to use energy-efficient IT systems and concepts.”

Our partners are an incredibly important piece of the sustainability puzzle: they are perfectly positioned to advise customers on which IT investments will keep them on track with their sustainability and transformation goals.

This is where VMware's Zero Carbon Committed initiative steps in. We want to empower you to provide customers with guidance on how to build efficient, trackable and compliant IT systems. The initiative is designed to ensure that by 2030, using VMware Cloud infrastructure, VMware Zero Carbon Committed providers use 100% renewable energy to power their data centres, giving customers confidence in the sustainability of their IT. Larik-Jan also noted that the platform plays an important role in enabling Fundaments to achieve its own sustainability goals, while making it much easier for the company to help customers build sustainable IT systems.

‍

The role partners can play: Fundaments

However, we should not forget that every customer's carbon footprint is different. While Fundaments' work is undoubtedly unique, it does offer three key lessons that partners can take away when helping customers integrate best practices in terms of sustainable IT:

Understanding: helping customers understand the benefits of mapping their energy consumption is a must. Not only to reduce their carbon footprint, but also to reduce costs and comply with legal and procurement requirements.

Mapping: once customers fully understand the benefits, the actual process of mapping their energy consumption follows. Supporting clients on this journey, and having the ability to generate detailed data with accurate measurements of how much energy is consumed by components of an IT system, is incredibly important for the credibility of your advice.

Build: once all the data has been gathered, it is time to start building more efficient IT systems and encourage customers to embrace technologies that support sustainability efforts. For example, Fundaments helps data centre customers build a large number of virtual servers, dramatically increasing their energy efficiency.

‍