Today’s enterprises are prioritizing environmental sustainability both as a source of business value and a key part of their future-proofing strategy. In the 2022 Equinix Global Tech Trends Survey, 69% of global IT leaders said that sustainability is now one of the most important drivers for their organizations.
To address the full environmental impact of their operations, enterprises must consider their IT infrastructure. Legacy data centers use a significant amount of energy to power digital business processes. This is why Equinix has deployed new technologies to help optimize energy consumption at every logical level in the data center, from HVAC units to virtual storage to server processors.
We’ve also committed to becoming climate-neutral globally by 2030, making us the first company in the data center industry to publicly announce such a pledge. This transformation will help us empower and support our customers, who will benefit from the higher performance and uptime, greater business resiliency, and lower costs that stem from green initiatives.
Schneider Electric accelerates a more sustainable future
See how the company drives sustainable energy management and industrial automation for its’ customers while ensuring business growth and sustainability.
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Equinix customers are among the most innovative and influential in the world. They are meeting the demands of rapid digital transformation across every industry and segment around the globe, which includes taking steps to ensure environmental sustainability. Thanks to the partnership we have with these customers, we have a unique opportunity to help bring their success stories to you. We call this the Digital Leaders Series.
In the latest entry of the series, I sat down with Zach Nimboorkar, Senior Vice President of Global IT Infrastructure, Operations and Data Platforms at Schneider Electric, to get his perspective on energy optimization in cloud and data center facilities. Here’s what I learned.
Tech debt translates to energy inefficiency
Most data centers weren’t originally built or organized with energy optimization in mind. This has created “tech debt,” broadly defined as the growing consequences of an initial suboptimal design. The overarching goal should be to consolidate resources, especially servers, to get more business utilization from less hardware and floor space. In turn, this allows businesses to meet their IT needs while using less power and generating less carbon emissions.
Different service models create new opportunities for optimization
Like many other organizations, Schneider Electric has historically used Infrastructure as a Service to pursue information optimization. Recently, it has started using different service models to enable the next evolution of its IT infrastructure, including Platform as a Service and Bare Metal as a Service. These new models are helping Schneider simultaneously improve performance and make its operations more sustainable.
The right partner makes a key difference
At a time of unprecedented supply constraints and associated delays, energy efficiency implementations may take longer than originally planned. Fortunately, businesses can mitigate or even eliminate such delays by partnering with the right trusted specialist. In the video, Zach and I discussed how many Equinix customers are turning up virtual infrastructure built on digital services such as Equinix Metal™, Network Edge and Equinix Fabric™. Once supply chain constraints ease, customers will be able to choose whether to keep their virtual instance or replace it with physical hardware.
It always starts with a purpose: what is a company trying to achieve in terms of their digital transformation? For us, it was very simple. It was about making IT infrastructure modern, because of the legacy footprint that we have. That organically translated into reduction of the footprint, thus reducing the carbon footprint.”– Zach Nimboorkar, Senior Vice President of Global IT Infrastructure and Operations at Schneider Electric
The Equinix Digital Leader Series is an opportunity to use the power of customer stories to showcase the digital transformation happening all around us. By connecting with our customers and partners to help tell their stories, we are helping others shape their own digital transformations. Through meaningful and candid conversations, we are sharing the positives and pitfalls that customers may be experiencing in their own journeys.
Watch the Schneider Electric video today.
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