Environmental sustainability of IT revolves around efficiency

What is your current role and day to day responsibilities?

I am currently responsible for assisting our customers in identifying and delivering digital transformation programmes. Working closely with our sales team and solution architects, we achieve a thorough understanding of our customers’ needs, which combined with the various services available on Platform Eqinix enables them to plan a phased route to digital business. I have responsibility for Equinix’s Growth and Emerging Market sector, GEMS, in which Ireland is a crucial country, and focus on the general enterprise sector which encompasses all verticals from Retail to Financial Services.

What is your professional background?

Originating in the London Insurance Market, I gravitated into IT services about 15 years ago, initially focusing on the connectivity and ecosystem access needs of the global insurance industry.

Now 10 years into my roles at Equinix, I have transtioned into a general digital transformation advisory role that focuses on the enterprise sector, bringing me into regular contact with IT leaders across all industries. This allows me to advise and assist any business on issues ranging from the data and security requirements for highly regulated industries, to agility and dynamism in retail or manufacturing.

What are some of the biggest challenges your clients are facing in the current IT landscape?

The main challenges all relate to the ever-quickening pace of change that enterprises are seeing in the arrival and adoption of digital technologies.

Pre-pandemic, most sectors were actively looking at the digital landscape and reviewing how, and to what extent, it would impact on them, as well as the level of technological change they would need to execute. The pandemic saw a dramatic shift from traditional operations largely focused on analogue person-to-person interactions, to one where remote digital operating became – and continues to be – the norm.

Enterprises must now make long-term plans that embrace and support this new reality. Areas including remote and distributed working, operational resilience, security, and the appropriate use of digital services such as cloud, must all be reviewed and prioritised.

To achieve this, businesses need budget and a proper roadmap. They need to develop new skills in IT, yet maintain business as usual in a time of change and uncertainty. And they must do all of this in a sustainable fashion!

Our customers are now increasingly aware that they now have to look at true digital transformation if they are to thrive in a time of changing customer needs and fast-paced technological change.

What are your thoughts on digital transformation?

From our experience across the Equinix customer base, it would not be unreasonable to say that not only will digital transformation almost certainly be the dominant force in technology over the coming years, it will also be one of the defining themes of commerce in general.

I’d like to illustrate that through two examples. The first comes from a global logistics customer, who told us that one of the consequences of the last two years is their realisation that what their customers want more than anything is to simply have up-to-date information. They want to know where their consignments are and when they will arrive. That may be a simple expectation for the end user, but it requires multiple systems and databases to be interconnected to give real time answers. Only complete digital transformation that focuses on leveraging cloud technology can achieve this.

The second example comes from a bank, who had previously declared that there were, in financial services, two main drivers: the performance of any investment, and the risks taken to achieve this. They have since added a third driver – impact – which brings the whole question of sustainability into the business environment and which will require very smart, committed digital transformation to achieve.

So from two very different industries, and two different angles, we see just two examples of the importance of digital transformation on the enterprise world of today.

Software-as-a-Service. What are the key benefits?

There are many!

•Very rapid onboarding for first use

•No need to host systems, worry about storage or provide sufficient compute capability

•Clear understanding of how charges are calculated

•No need for system updates or system version control

•DR should be available as standard

•Currently very beneficial for carbon emissions figures

•Security supplied as part of the contract

•No need for system maintenance skills in house

•Hopefully state-of-the-art service

What are your thoughts on how sustainability can be addressed from an IT perspective?

When we talk about sustainability, we consider all aspects of environmental, social and governance (ESG). Equinix is investing across all ESG pillars, with targets set against each one, and so too are the digital leaders we speak to every day.

When you look at the environmental sustainability of IT, in my view this all revolves around efficiency and making sure the hosting of systems is done as effectively as possible.

The starting place for this is to use contemporary data centres with very low PUE (power usage effectiveness).

Secondly, you need to ensure that the power and cooling is delivered effectively, be it through purchasing certified green power, the use of new technology such as fuel cells, or via supplier commitments to carbon neutrality.

Finally, hardware efficiency needs to be addressed through the use of hyperconvergence where software-defined infrastructures that group all computing, storage and network features together are deployed which will deliver the maximum performance possible from the minimum inputs.

What big tech trends do you believe are changing the world?

•Hybrid multi-cloud

•Software defined infrastructure

•IOT for real time data production

•AI and Machine Learning for analytics

•The use of blockchain

•The coming but unclear impact of quantum computing especially where security is concerned

Where do you see your role in 5 years’ time?

I will be continung to champion digital transformation. It is not a “one and done” project where change has an end point. The inputs will change – right now, for example, much of it is driven by changing customer needs – yet the logarithmic rise of sustainability, even in the last 12 months, has shown how priorities can shift.

And outputs will change, too – the banking comment about impact now being part of the results mix demonstrates that. But at all stages in the enterprise process, technology will drive an ongoing transformation effort that must permeate every department and every product or service. From a business perspective, as well as from an environmental and customer one, the opportunities and possibilities are limitless.

James Maudslay is speaking at the CIO & IT Leaders Summit on June 28th in Croke Park. Visit www.ciosummit.ie for full details and booking