by Sarwar Khan and James Mcllvenny
CIOs and CTOs play an increasingly important role in accelerating sustainability within their organizations, and sustainability has become a top priority for these leaders.
In 2021, CIOs at industry-leading global companies were asked to indicate their top three priorities for the year. Not one of them named sustainability. However, 50% of the same CIOs now indicated that sustainability was a top three priority. This reflects efforts by thousands of enterprises around the world to achieve ambitious emissions reduction goals. Sustainability has moved with urgency into the operational sphere.
BT’s Digital Carbon Calculator
Effecting a sustainable digital transformation depends on measurability and access to carbon data. However, the biggest challenge faced by CIOs is finding a robust, detailed measurement and tracking system that can provide critical carbon data. Solving this measurement problem is why BT developed the newly launched Digital Carbon Calculator to measure carbon emissions for IT services.
The Digital Carbon Calculator is a digital tool that helps organizations move toward greater sustainability by providing IT teams with the ability to measure the current carbon footprint of the enterprise environment, identify carbon hotspots for digital products and services—from networks to endpoint devices—and track the impact of changes over time.
The Digital Carbon Calculator enables operators to:
- View ICT estimated carbon footprint in tons of CO₂
- See the carbon footprint by region, country, and device category
- Track changes in emissions as the IT estate is transformed
- Cover Cisco, Meraki, Fortinet, Dell, and Apple devices based on ISO 14040 LCA data
- Share data via SAP to be compliant with the PACT framework (in pilot)
The data from a wide range of devices helps teams make more informed choices around digital transformation.. Also, when an ICT device reaches end of service, the Digital Carbon Calculator provides insights to help organizations drive circularity to reduce e-waste and further contribute toward overall company emissions reduction.
Simply put, enterprises can use BT’s Digital Carbon Calculator to pinpoint which network assets to optimize for sustainability. By integrating carbon footprint data and IT services lifecycle management, BT’s Digital Carbon Calculator (shown below) helps organizations attain network efficiencies and progress toward greater sustainability.
Equinix: Increasing Sustainability in Operations
Equinix is committed to its Future First strategy with leading sustainable data center design and efficiency. With 251 data centers — 96% renewable energy coverage worldwide— in 70 major locations throughout 32 countries, Equinix offers a solutions framework that can be implemented step by step to transform an organization’s global network, with each step forward further lowering latencies, increasing performance, and reducing emissions.
Step 1: Choose to co-locate in hubs for direct services access
Shifting scope 1 and 2 data center operations emissions to an Equinix data center co-location closer to end user applications helps lower latencies and increase performance, and moves organizations closer to their net zero goals. Enterprises that take advantage of data center co-location through Equinix receive:
- Digital Strategy Briefing to determine the most effective multi-cloud architecture for optimal operational efficiency
- Green Power Report, which is a renewable energy attestation statement that equips organizations with the environmental data they need to measure and report relevant metrics in pursuit of their environmental sustainability targets
Step 2: Interconnect virtually for higher efficiency
Equinix Fabric® is an automated Interconnection-as-a-Service solution, providing interconnectivity from Equinix data centers that allows customers to virtually connect thousands of networks, clouds, digital services, SaaS platforms, and more.
Step 3: Flexibly leverage virtual network functions
Network Edge provides virtual network functions that customers can consume as-a-service, allowing organizations to eventually eliminate network hardware.
Step 4: Host private clouds in highly efficient environments
Equinix Metal®, an automated Infrastructure-as-a-Service solution, provides enterprises the full range of capabilities they need to deliver infrastructure orchestration, respond quickly to changing needs, scale global infrastructure up or down in near-real time, and develop and deploy new applications and services in less time than before.
Reach Your Sustainability Goals
BT and Equinix have formed a strong partnership based on a shared commitment to sustainability. Together, BT and Equinix help companies work toward net zero targets in three of the most important areas for reducing carbon emissions: virtualization, energy efficiency, and low-/no-code and green software.
Combining BT’s global network and BT Digital Carbon Calculator with Equinix’s infrastructure solutions, data center co-location, and virtual interconnection services, enterprises can take advantage of a hybrid multi-cloud environment to enable energy efficiency and optimize potential carbon emissions reductions.
To learn more: equinix.com/partners/partner-directory/bt
Sarwar Khan is Sustainability Lead at BT and James Mcllvenny is Product Marketing Manager, Digital Interconnection at Equinix.