New Pure Storage Survey Shows IT’s Impact on Global Sustainability

New Pure Storage Survey Shows IT's Impact on Global Sustainability

Pure Storage® (NYSE: PSTG), the IT pioneer that delivers the world’s most advanced data storage technology and services, in partnership with Wakefield Research, has released a new report identifying the critical impact of IT on environmental sustainability and the challenges present in addressing the urgent and growing demands for IT to be accountable drivers of change.

The new report, “Drivers of Change: Pure Storage IT Sustainability Impact Survey 2022,” examines the opportunities for IT professionals to collaborate with enterprise sustainability directors to navigate reductions in the environmental footprint of their organisations.

Survey Highlights:

The “Drivers of Change” survey, fielded among 1,000 sustainability programme directors, saw consistent results across global markets, including the U.S., U.K., France, and Germany. Report highlights include:

  • Half of Sustainability Managers Are Behind on Sustainability Goals: Most sustainability managers – 78% – say their company’s leadership is treating sustainability initiatives as a priority, with the majority planning to meet sustainability goals within three to seven years (56%). However, only about half (51%) of those surveyed say they are on track with their goals.

  • Technology Plays a Critical, Growing Role in Driving Sustainability Initiatives: An overwhelming 86% of sustainability programme managers agree that companies cannot reach their sustainability goals without significantly reducing their technology infrastructure energy usage. This problem will grow more dire as 81% predict the impact of technology infrastructure on a company’s carbon footprint will increase in the next 12 months.

  • Misalignment of IT and Sustainability Teams in Purchasing Decisions: Even as tech’s carbon footprint grows, 59% of respondents say vendors’ sustainability is likely to be overlooked during the vendor selection. This could be eased by getting sustainability managers’ input earlier, but nearly 2 in 3 (64%) say they only become involved after the technology purchasing process has already begun.

  • IT Team Support of Company Sustainability Initiatives is Dire:  More than any other function (i.e. finance, leadership, operations), IT was identified as not taking the necessary steps to support their company’s sustainability goals (34%). Only about half (51%) say their IT team is taking proper considerations about sustainability when making decisions about technology purchases.

Industry Significance:

Data centres currently account for 1% of global electricity consumption today. The World Economic Forum estimates that digitization generated 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 alone. However, if brought to scale digital technologies could reduce emissions by 20% by 2050.

Data centres and digitization play an undeniably important part in any corporate sustainability strategy. While sustainability managers are working towards meeting critical environmental goals, they can’t do so without more sustainable IT infrastructure marked by high efficiency, scalability, and simplicity.

As a result, IT professionals have a tremendous opportunity to help their organisations make strides in reducing their environmental footprint. By building and adopting sustainable technology infrastructure, supported by innovative, efficient, and scalable IT vendors, IT teams have the potential to make a significant and immediate impact through technology engineered to use significantly lower power, lower cooling, and far less waste.

Executive Insight:

  • “As data workloads increase, mitigating the environmental impact of data infrastructure is critical. This inaugural report on the central role that IT can play in overall sustainability can be an important tool to help IT leaders improve their data storage strategies and decrease their organisation’s carbon footprint as they advance their digital transformation.” — Ajay Singh, Chief Product Officer, Pure Storage

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About the Author: Isaac Washington

Isaac Washington is the most recent addition to our team. Isaac specializes in General News, and Home and Garden news. Isaac has worked for years in the agricultural industry and recently has turned his attention to writing. Technology is one of his passions.