Climate-Resilient DevOps: Integrating EcoTech Insights – Bonnie Schneider, Techstrong Group

This is texturung TV. Hello everyone and welcome to today's LinkedIn live session. I'm Bonnie Schneider sustainability contributor to the tech strong group, and I'm pleased to have you here all joining us now for this informative and engaging conversation.

With Earth Day just two days away now is the perfect time to discuss the impact of climate change on the tech industry and Sustainable Solutions and also like to introduce our new sustainability initiative at Tech strong Ecotech insights. We're also going to discuss innovative solutions for reducing emissions in the tech sector ESG regulations and their importance to devops professionals. Remember, this is an interactive conversation.

So I encourage all of you to participate Asking questions and sharing your thoughts in the comments section. We're going to do our best to address as many of you as possible with your questions during the live stream. My background is as a meteorologist and I have witnessed an increasing amount of these disasters occurring in terms of the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, certainly over the past two decades.

Now, these changes are linked many of them to different types of weather is what I'm referring to they can be linked directly to climate change and some of course the link that's doing directly linked to human activities and the resulting emissions of greenhouse gases as a result. It has become more critical than ever to understand the impacts of climate change on various Industries, including the it sector it infrastructure and services can be impacted by extreme weather events such as floods wildfires and heat waves these events can disrupt operations damage equipment and lead to downtime. So first I want to Here with you some examples of some of the weather events that we've seen that I've had Direct impacts globally that have affected the it infrastructure data centers and some places that you may have already read about this when it happened.

So first I want to go back to 2011. There was flooding in Thailand and that disrupted the supply chain for back then hard disk drives and that led to a 28% reduction in global just for juice major companies, like Western Digital had to Halt their operations in effected areas and in New York City, this was one I covered personally Super Storms super storm Sandy. Remember that was in 2012.

Well, not only did that cause major power outages that affected so many and flooding damage, but we also saw blending at data centers such as datagram's facility right in New York City and that led to downtime for websites that you might know like BuzzFeed or The Huffington Post damages were estimated to be at 30 billion dollars. Now we'll bring things a little closer to the current time and 2019. There was a major heat wave in Europe and that led to increased cooling costs for data centers with temperatures reaching record highs 46 degrees Celsius to 114 degrees Fahrenheit.

That's pretty hot well that impacted facilities like ovh's Data Center and Strasburg, France and also In California in 2020, the following year wildfires affected air quality and caused temporary shutdowns of data centers. In fact Apple had to temporarily close its Elk Grove facility due to poor air quality caused by the fires. And one thing you have to remember about wildfires and air quality the air quality can remain poor long after the fire has been put out so you can still have poor air quality even a week after and another thing to notice that the winds can travel the the Ash and the soot from those wildfires for Miles so it can even if you're not directly next to where the fire is and Facilities can be impacted by those wildfires wildfires are also burning at with more intensity and affecting more areas due to climate change.

Well, let's talk about 2021. So we're Switching gears in extreme weather Events first we're talking about wildfires, but let's talk about winter. Do you remember this just in 2021?

There was a massive winter storm in Texas and it led to tremendous power outages, but it also disrupted it. Services and that impacted companies like Rackspace which had to rely on backup generators to keep their data centers running during the crisis. I want to go to the live stream and see if we have any comments yet.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's really interesting about how this is all affecting.

Weather is affecting so many areas of it infrastructure. I think we think of personally how it affects our homes when we lose power and certainly does but it also affects the community greater and a greater way. now I want to also bring it back to even more recently because just last year in 2022.

We had record heat remember in London across Europe record hot temperatures. In fact, the hottest temperatures ever and parts of France. com.

com. com where you can read more about what happened in 22 and how the heat impacted data centers there and a lot of other information. com before we go and I want to just give you some strategies of how you can boost your organizations resilience to extreme weather events.

And starting with the fact that we are now in April, we're in the spring season. And this is the biggest season where we see floods. So at least in the US, so I want to talk about the fact that it's a good idea for organizations to evaluate their flood risk and relocate critical infrastructure.

If necessary Implement flood resistant designs, like barriers and flood walls raised foundations and always be ready for those potential Supply chains disruptions, including alternate routes and suppliers. And of course really for any of these events you want to regularly review your plan and make sure you've taken the proper precautions to assess risk and plan for it with measures in place. Well, June 1st will be the start of the Atlantic hurricane season and that affects so many people so it's important that everyone for their organizations.

Make sure you have your disaster plan in place and this also applies to flooding because this is a byproduct of these storms make sure your waterproof servers are in closed. And Implement redundant power supplies that make sure you have backup generators and things like that. It's very important.

Also something we talked about with data centers. It's a good idea to invest in energy efficient cooling systems, like liquid or free air cooling implementing temperature monitoring systems to make sure that you have an automated rapid response. And of course, this is something we saw a lot during the pandemic that's carried on is having You know remote work is especially during when we have these power outages or we have extreme heat events that will help prevent that strain on resources and finally with Wildfire risk.

We want to implement fire resistant designs, like non-combustible materials, fire resistant landscaping and firebreaks. And of course, make sure you have your disaster plan just to get some more comments coming in. It looks so we have some people participating apologize here.

Just trying to get these in okay. So we have a question here from Christopher Barnett and his question is how can we quantify the effectiveness of our sustainability initiatives great question because that's really the thing a lot of people have already started on this journey and becoming more sustainable and they want to be able to to talk about how they can improve those those areas and and monitor it one of the things that a lot of tech companies have done is relying more on renewable energy and that includes sourcing Solar or wind power for data centers and that can significantly reduce the carbon footprint while ensuring uninterrupted operations some major companies that we all have heard of are implementing these strategies already. I wanted to highlight a few of them for you like Apple's data center in made in North Carolina that's powered by a hundred acres solar form farm.

And that's the alarm one of the largest privately owned solar facilities in the US. Google has been carbon neutral since 2007 and they're working towards 24/7 carbon free energy for its data centers and they've invested in renewable energy projects including wind farms in the US and Europe. Microsoft's data center in Cheyenne Wyoming integrates wind and biogas power to achieve zero carbon operations and not facility is powered by a local wind farm and a biogaspowered fuel cell system.

And finally Amazon web services has set a goal for power to power its Global infrastructure with 100% renewable energy AWS has invested in several wind and solar Farms worldwide to reach this objective. And another question that came to me. I guess this one was through email.

Can you explain the upcoming ESG rules and regulations in the EU globally and how they might affect the tech industry and why it's essential for devops professionals to be knowledgeable about ESG. Okay, I could definitely answer that because ESG is certainly something that everybody is talking about so I'm gonna break it down for everyone watching. So ESG stands for environmental social and governance.

It's become a critical Focus for businesses worldwide including the tech industry and we've seen Horizon new rules and regulations related to ESG both in the EU and globally. I'd like to outline some of those regulations and how it might impact the tech industry. Well, we have the EU taxonomy regulation and that establishes classification systems to Define environmentally sustainable activities.

So that's something that attack firm for example in the EU would have to align their sustainability reporting with this taxonomy. And that's one to keep in mind. Another is the nrfd which requires large companies to disclose information related to their ESG performance and tech companies operating the EU will be needing to comply with a lot of these reporting requirements and that will help investors and stakeholders make informed decisions.

There's also to know those are just some of the mandatory ones that I mentioned but there's also voluntary brain works that tech companies are increasingly adopting. Thing to demonstrate their commitment to sustainability and transparency now for those of you that work in devops, you may be wondering. Well, what does this mean to me?

Well understanding ESG is important for several reasons for devops professionals. And let's talk about that for a minute is understanding ESG risks, it allows companies and people that work in these organizations to drive Innovation within the tech industry, which is really crucial for them to be aware and take action like improving Energy Efficiency reducing waste and up upholding ethical labor practices. It all comes together as part of ESG.

So devops teams can help to develop sustainable products and and operate in a more sustainable way, which of course is very supported by the stakeholders of the company plus ESG initiatives also have collaboration across different teams. So devops professionals can help Foster that from the it areas to other parts of the company as well and finally and you may already Have noticed this within your organization when companies have strong ESG performance, they tend to attract and retain top talent and that improves the transparency of the companies. So there's a lot of different reasons that ESG disclosures influence investment decisions as well.

And that's something to keep in mind. It seems that it's kind of an overriding issue that is leading to more sustainable products and services and better operational efficiency and Supply Chain management as well. So that makes a difference in creating a more resilient business model.

And as I mentioned ESG is something we're going to talk a lot more about on Ecotech insights and some of the upcoming interviews. I'll be doing that you can watch as well. And I think they'll be informative to get a better idea of the what's happening with ESG globally and how any initiatives that your own company might be applicable to that and of course a big part of this whole sustainability of movement that we're doing in the initiative at the texturing group is to give you better information and expert insights and information that you can use in your own work and what you're doing and create an interactive dialogue so we can better understand the sustainability space and share the latest Innovations and the latest solutions that are being brought about and of course, I I as I mentioned at the top of this we have two days to Earth Day, it's really Earth month throughout the month of April.

So this really was the perfect time to do this LinkedIn live and it looks like I don't see another question from the three that I mentioned already. So I'm going to move along because I'm sure some of you are in the middle of your lunch hour. So we're gonna wrap up this LinkedIn live session.

And I want to thank you all for your active participation and the questions that came in from ESG for to devops. I was really a diverse group and I appreciate that and I think it's clear that understanding and addressing the impacts of climate change and embracing ESG principles really makes a difference for the tech industry and it's a big part of what's going to be happening in the future. com as we support each other in this journey towards more sustainable text sector.

com for more information on Sustainable Solutions and Innovations. Once again, I'm funny Schneider. I'm a sustainability contributor to detect strong group and it's been a pleasure discussing these interesting and important topics with you today.

I hope everyone has a terrific rest of your day and a great Earth Day and let's keep the conversation going.