About this talk
This talk discusses sustainable IT and its importance in building a greener future. The speaker, Saravanan, shares insights on how the tech sector contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and the need for sustainable practices. He emphasizes the significance of both hardware and software efficiency, offering examples such as the benefits of cloud computing and the role of the Green Software Foundation in fostering sustainable software development. The session highlights actionable steps for individuals and organizations to reduce their carbon footprint, including training in FinOps and engaging in community initiatives. Ultimately, the talk calls for a cultural shift towards sustainability within the tech industry.
Full transcript
Hello everyone. Good morning. If you can hear me, please give me a thumbs up. All right. Well, Hi, welcome to my talk. Um I'm going to will be talking about sustainable IT, the path to a greener future. My name is Saravanan. I work as a architect at Rabobank. Can someone tell me which movie uh this image is from? No? The Matrix. Yeah, indeed. So, in 1950, Isaac
Asimov, the science fiction author, wrote a series of short stories called I, Robot, in which he talks about machines taking over the world somewhere in the 21st century. It is now 2026 and we are a quarter past the 21st century. Computers have indeed taken over the world. There are more machines and processes in this room than humans and they're growing more powerful as we speak. Let me
give you an example. Oh, before that, interesting bit of trivia. Can someone name this model of a phone? It's not a virtually generated image. It is an actual phone that existed many years ago. No? It's the It's the Mitsubishi Trium Aria phone. It was launched in the year 2000. It weighed just 90 g and it came with eight ringtones, a calculator app, a note-taking app, and it
was also fax compatible. You know, if you use fax anymore, but but it was a really cool piece of technology for its time. And I think this was also inspired in the movie Matrix, though Matrix movie used a a Nokia phone, but it had almost the same design. But I digress. Let's come back to the topic. Can I ask all of you to take your smartphones and
uh hold it up like this? Yeah. So, just checking if anyone has a keypad phone like this, but no. Um now, I want you to imagine this. You have more computing power in the palm of your hands than the Apollo 11 computers that were used to fly uh man to the moon. The Apollo 11 guidance computers had a processing power of 14,000 floating-point operations per second, whereas
the smartphones in your hand they have uh processing powers of trillions of operations per second. So, you have a neural engine in the palm of your hands. In the words of uh Neil Armstrong, it's indeed a giant leap for mankind, or in this case, artificial kind. But, all this power comes at a cost. I think you know this, with great power comes great responsibility. Yeah, but what
I say to you is with great computing power comes a an even greater carbon footprint. But, what is carbon footprint? Carbon footprint is nothing but an indication of the amount of uh greenhouse gases, that is uh you have uh your carbon dioxide, methane that are generated as a result of our action. And this includes the technology we use and the software we create. So, today we are
going to talk about sustainable IT, the path to a greener uh future. Why do we need to acknowledge uh sustainable IT in green software? What is green software and how do we build expertise around it? And what are the ways in which we can take action and make an impact? So, why do we need to acknowledge sustainable IT? Why now? Well, for that, we need to look
at the some of the facts. The United Nations Environment Program did a study and found that the tech sector is is responsible for 2 to 3% of the global greenhouse gas emissions. Yeah, 2 to 3% that's not much you might think. But until the time you compare it to the aviation industry thought to be one of the most polluting industries that also emits almost the same level
of carbon dioxide emissions. And we are not even talking about the global e-waste problem. According to the World Health Organization in 2019 more than 53 million tons of e-waste was generated out of which only 20% was documented to be recycled efficiently. So we have a huge problem on our hands. And there are ways in which we can tackle these challenges. The challenges are twofold broadly. Hardware and
infrastructure side. And then you have the software side. We come to the hardware side. Yeah, moving to the cloud that was one ambitions of organizations many years ago, but nowadays most of the organizations have some presence in the cloud if not all. But moving to the cloud has its own advantages. So companies do not have to spend millions of euros in buying expensive hardware which becomes obsolete
in a couple of years time and then they have to buy new hardware to replace the old ones. And they have to build they don't have to build data centers for exclusively for their use. They don't have to have skilled personnel to maintain the data centers 24/7. Moving to the cloud reduces all this cost. That's the capital expenditure Moving to the cloud also brings you scalable methods
based on your business needs. also they are also reliable in the sense that you have a lot of data centers with backup facilities around the world. And disaster recovery is really possible and practical. But, are they sustainable? Well, most of the major cloud providers, they are carbon neutral data centers like Google, Azure, and AWS, and they are having ambitions to move towards net zero, that is carbon
free energy like wind turbine, solar, geothermal, nuclear, etc. An organization point of view, moving to the cloud has definite benefits. But, it also is a double-edged sword because on one hand, it I I believe there are DevOps engineers here in this crowd. On one hand, if you are working in the cloud, then you have the ability and the freedom to spin virtual machines on the fly. But,
what happens is that there are instances wherein you have virtual machines running on the on the on the cloud during non-business hours and also during the weekends. That not only adds to the cost, but also is not a sustainable practice. But, how do we ensure we train our personnel, our colleagues, in sustainable ways of optimal utilization of resources? That's where FinOps Foundation comes in place. FinOps Foundation
is a has come up with a lot of training courses around FinOps certified practitioner and engineers. And also for the AI part, how do we make sure we optimally use our cloud resources? I encourage you to go and if possible get trained in these in these methodologies. For from a company point of view, then once the DevOps team is trained, then there is a need to have
a central FinOps team in order to drive resource optimal utilization. And this can be done through cloud utilization dashboards and recommendations provided by most of the cloud providers nowadays. We looked at the hardware side. Now, let's go to the software side. That's where Green Software Foundation Has anyone heard of Green Software Foundation? Okay, yeah, that's good. A couple of hands more than what I encountered in the
previous talk. That's a good sign. So, the Green Software Foundation is a non-profit organization founded by Microsoft, GitHub, Accenture, and ThoughtWorks. They are an ecosystem of best practices and tools to build green software. One of their aims, ambitions, is to make sure that the tech industry makes software that is part of the climate solution and not part of the problem. And they want to do this by
again having free courses available. I encourage you to visit their website and unlike the FinOps Foundation, this is entirely free. You can and very interesting courses green software methodologies and you can become green software practitioners. look at their website, you also notice that based on the evolving trends, for example, they also have courses for GenAI practitioners and they have come up with their own carbon measurement engine
that you can plug into your applications and measure your digital footprint. So, I urge you to look up their website as well. Microsoft, of course, they have a really popular course called the principles of sustainable software engineering. This also provides you practical methods in which you can make your software more sustainable. And this, mind you, this does not focus only on Microsoft, but in general all technologies.
But, what do these courses cover? We talk about green software a lot, but what is green software? So, green software is the software that emits the least carbon possible. mainly by addressing three major components. Uh one is the energy efficiency, the second is hardware efficiency, and the third is carbon awareness. If we go into the details, how do you ensure you have energy efficient software? By consuming
the least amount of electricity possible. This can be done um for example, power usage effectiveness. This is a metric that is used by most of the data centers nowadays. What is power usage effectiveness or PUE? PUE is how much energy your computing devices use as compared to your cooling and other overheads. So, if I give you an example, if a data center's PUE is 1.0, that means
computing calculation devices are using the entire energy, and very minimal or almost zero is used for This is 1.0 is more very ideal situation. It's very difficult to achieve, but then let's take a maybe a practical example on the other side, 1.5 PUE. That means uh if a data center is pulling in 15 kW of energy, electricity, then it uses 5 kW just for the cooling, and
the remaining only 10 kW for the calculations and the computations. This is not so ideal situation. Uh so, data centers aim to move as much as possible towards 1.0 PUE to make it more efficient and sustainable. This is about uh you know, how we can make our data centers more efficient Next, if you look at carbon awareness. Here, the focus is on carbon intensity. So, how much
carbon dioxide is emitted per kilowatt of electricity that is used? So, how do we make sure the carbon intensity is reduced? By doing more when the electricity is cleaner and doing less when it is dirty. But, what is cleaner versus dirty? So, cleaner is more towards electricity or energy that is produced by using renewable resources like solar energy, wind, and then you have geothermal, hydroelectric power. And
then most of the fossil fuels we term that as dirty energy. But, how do we ensure we have less emissions? By these two methods. One is spatial shifting. The other is temporal Spatial shifting means that in a in a cloud resource, you have you have more the the front end and then the back end where the computations happen. If it is possible in your application setup to
move your computations to a different region where let's say there is more renewable energy, for example, solar or wind power, then that is called spatial shifting. And that that helps in making sure your carbon footprint is lower. On the other hand, I know there are regulations a lot of data regulations within Europe. Maybe you're not able to move your data outside the country, then you can look
at temporal shifting. And that is moving in terms of time. So, let's say if it's really sunny outside, then you have more power from the solar panels, then you can make your computations work in the daytime and then maybe move it in the night if there is more of wind power. So, that is called temporal shifting. These two methods can be used in order to reduce your
carbon emissions through the electricity consumption. Then we come to hardware efficiency. So, every piece of hardware that we use has something called embodied embodied carbon. But what is embodied carbon? It's the amount of carbon pollution that is emitted during creation and disposal of the device. every your laptops, your mobile phones, the display devices, all of them have embodied carbon in them. But how do we make sure
we use as less carbon as possible? Again, there are two ways. One is from an end-user point of view for individual use like you and me and then from a cloud computing or a data center point of view. To make sure you have a better lifespan for the devices that [snorts] you extend the lifespan of the device, one principle we can follow as individuals is reuse by
repair instead of purchase. You know, there is this one extreme example I can give you is the urge of of us, you know, to buy the latest smartphones whenever a new version is released. It's a constant battle of need versus want. Right? So, if we resist the urge to do this, then we free ourselves from unnecessary stress and also save a lot of money. unless you have
the smart the keypad phone that I uh, showed you earlier, I encourage you to extend your lifespan of your device as much as possible. And then you have the cloud computing. Uh, there the you can apply FinOps uh, practices in order to make sure you have uh, optimal usage of your cloud resources. We talked about uh, what are the theoretical ways uh, in which we can uh,
make an impact. But how do we make take action? How do we make sure we uh, translate our theory into practice? One is at an enterprise level and the other individuals like you and me, how we can make an impact. For enterprises, uh, for the enterprise initiatives, of course uh, organizations work towards certain goals, main thing being the business goals. Then the other aspect that comes into
place, especially within the European Union, is the regulatory aspect. So, let's look at some of the regulatory uh, aspects. How many of you have heard of the Paris Agreement? Yeah, that's a good number of people. So, uh, in 2016, 195 countries signed the Paris Agreement. Uh, the main one of the main uh, goals uh, of achieving this climate goals was make sure that the temperature rise, the
global rise in temperature, is maintained less than 2° above pre-industrial levels. So, ideal ideally it should be less than 1.5°. And this means that the countries have to reduce their emissions by 50% by 2030. So, that's in I see some uh, skeptics uh, in the audience, but that's the ambition of the countries. Of course, we will uh, in a couple of years we'll know how much of
this has been achieved. But to do this, what the countries did, they committed towards some nationally determined contributions. That is their version of how much they have committed to uh to fulfill. And in order to fulfill these ambitions of the countries, they came up with a lot of regulations to reduce the And the regulations, of course, impact the organizations. And that's the other driver I was talking
about. When you have regulations that you have to comply with, then you have to you can reduce your digital carbon footprint. And how how do companies do this? That's where the enterprise architecture frameworks come in handy. You might have heard of TOGAF and the Zachman. They are more popular enterprise architecture frameworks. These frameworks are nowadays evolving to include sustainability as as a as a practice. So, if
I look at TOGAF from The Open Group, they have now come up with an uh guideline called the environmentally sustainable information systems guideline. highlights the purpose of digital sustainability capability. And also provides practical models such as The Open Group Open Footprint Model, which can be used to calculate your And being sustainable is not only a technical change or a technology change, but it also is a mindset
change. And this guideline also provides you the skills and the education programs that are needed to develop the culture of sustainability within your organization. Of course, business driver is is a key aspect why an organization exists. And this guideline talks about how to reshape your business architecture so that you are achieving your business ambitions, but but you are also being sustainable. No organization nowadays works without service
providers and strategic partners. This guideline asks service providers also to provide more transparency in how they operate and how they how environmentally friendly they So, from an enterprise point of view, if these guidelines are one of these guidelines are followed, then it helps to reduce your digital footprint from an organization point of view. We talked about enterprise initiatives, but what about individuals like you and me? Let's
say you took my advice. You went and completed the sustainability courses, the FinOps training, and became green software practitioners. You have a good LinkedIn boost after you put the certificates there. But then, what next? What you can do is share this knowledge and communicate and collaborate this with your colleagues. One example I have is within my organization. We have a sustainability community wherein we have more than
8,000 members around the globe. We interact often and organize events and initiatives like hackathons in order to ensure our carbon footprint is less and also to come up with new frameworks which we can share with other organizations. I encourage you to also initiate such communities within your companies promote this knowledge. If that is not an option, Green Software Foundation also has a very active forum, and this
is globally active, so you have experts from around the world in this forum whom you can approach and learn more about green software. And for people in the Netherlands, we have the meetups, of course. One of meetups that's quite popular nowadays is the Sustainable IT Netherlands meetup. This is a collaboration between organizations within Netherlands and also the Green Software Foundation. They are quite active in Netherlands and
they meet often and organize a lot of initiatives. So, if you get a chance, please attend one of the meetups here. And by the way, Kristoffer is one of my We started the community of sustainability within the within my organization along with the Chris. For a more hands-on approach, okay, the attending events is fine, but I want to contribute actively. Then I ask you to participate in
many of the one of the hackathons that are organized nowadays regularly. And mainly focusing on green hackathons. So, one example is the Green Hack. That's was done a couple of years ago by Green Software Foundation. We have the virtual hackathon from Stanford University. And did you know that the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam has a digital sustainability department and they organize hackathons regularly. So, yeah, we are in Amsterdam.
So, if you can attend one of these hackathons, it'll be really a good way to boost your knowledge and also contribute to this initiative. So, to summarize, we talked about why we need to acknowledge Sustainable IT and Green Software. What is Green Software? And how do we build expertise around it? I gave you a lot of options around and courses that you can follow. And most importantly,
how you can contribute towards this ecosystem. I'll leave you now a final slide on the United Nations Act Now webpage. How many of you have heard of the Act Now initiative from the United Nations? A couple, okay. Act Now is a United Nations campaign to encourage individuals like you and me to contribute towards sustainable development goals. So, this is a good initiative globally and contribute. If you
think your contributions as an individual are not making an impact, I ask you to think of the butterfly effect. According to chaos theory, when a butterfly flaps its wings somewhere in the Amazonian Amazonian jungles in South America, what happens is it creates a an effect that leads to a cyclone in North America. Such is the impact of that small action. And such is the power of that
small butterfly. Ladies and gentlemen, I see that butterfly in each one of you. I encourage you to flutter away, take take action, and make an impact. Thank >> [applause]
