Pure Storage’s Commitment to Sustainability – Prakash Darji, Pure Storage

This is texturong TV. I'm Bonnie Schneider sustainability is a growing concern for Industries as they aim to reduce their environmental impact. For the technology sector the energy intensive data centers and digital structure pose particular challenges as their viewed as a substantial drain on resources and companies like Pure Storage though are leading the way with Sustainable Solutions to minimize the environmental impact of technology their latest efforts include their new Energy Efficiency service level agreement for Evergreen one and the findings from the company's recent report drivers of change.

Pure Storage, it sustainability impact survey 2022 joining me now is prakash darji. He's the general manager of the digital experience business unit of Pure Storage prakash. Thank you so much for joining us on techstrong TV.

Yeah, Bonnie. Thanks for having me. Well, can you say we're very glad to have you can you share a little bit about your past experience with growing software companies and how that pass has prepared you for the current position you're in with Pure Storage.

Yeah prior to this. I spent over a decade at sap working on different applications and eventually built out the in-memory database business over there. And that's kind of when I first encountered a lot of the challenges in the data space and you know people always think about data problems is you know, how do we store it?

How do I use it Etc? But you know one thing that has Gardener that much attention till recently is what is the energy cost of data like burning data using data now that we're a little bit, you know further along. I think the we've gotten to the point where we wanted to tackle that problem in the first way to tackle that problem is take a look at measurement.

How do you measure it? So that's a good point. We we embarked on that.

It wasn't just the theoretical like oh, you know, if you do this, you'll save 10 trees. It's a no how many watts is this taking like, so we started this effort based on collecting for all of our storage systems and all of our customers. You know for their data telling them and showing them how many watts each terabyte or a gigabyte of data takes.

Right, so we just create a transparency and we launched that six months ago and I was amazed at the reception. We got in the industry. Were they surprised about how much it energy it took or were they?

I'm just curious what the range was? No, I most of it was they were surprised at how low it was. Oh and they had no idea.

Right. So, um, you know one and that's a testament to some of the things we build because you know prior systems and other things we've seen from an industry survey standpoint or like hey, we'll reduce your power bill 5x 10x 20x Etc. Right.

There's a high degree of reduction, but you know, those things fall under fears if you can't see it, so we provided that visibility and then you know, the next thing that went further was like, okay. This is one of these things that our data is going to constantly grow and you're gonna constantly need to do more with less, right? You know, it's one of those things that you don't want to have to grow the power generation capabilities on the planet.

In a straight line path with data, so to do that. Could we give you a guarantee that ensures that you know, we can optimize your power and that's why we started this initiative around saying, you know for this performance level will guarantee watts per terabyte. And I think that you know my hope is that does become an in Industry standard Norm, right?

The industry on does understand that, you know, Powers intrinsically leads to almost everything in the economy we do today and You know even in my own home when I did solar it helped me become more conscious of what I'm using how much I mean when I'm using it and can I you know make decisions that actually optimize power, right? So transparency is first and then guarantees our second that's kind of the way I looked at the world and that's what we did with our energy guarantee. That is a really fascinating.

And what about though? I mean we can sort of take a regular day and say well this is the amount of data that you would use on a typical day. But then as we all know disasters happen climate changes bringing about more of these extreme weather events.

So we're seeing the potential for surges and heat waves and things like that. What is your research showed in that area when we're dealing with extreme conditions? You know, it's fascinating that right now.

We're in a place where the global narrative and the global stage isn't on an equal playing field. Like when I talked to London, it's like oh my God, like that's the only thing that matters is power and energy when I talk to customer in Atlanta. They're like, why are you even talking to me about this?

You know, I mean, it's not a universal Global playing field because countries that are in countries that are inherently constrained. Saying I'm prevented from growing because of my power envelope. Because of the space I have because the energy generation capabilities I have.

That's constraining their economy from growing. And that's happening, right? Yeah other thing that's happening is you know, obviously we know about kind of the geopolitics and what's going on in the world, but you know there there is gaining steam climate Accord Around clean energy, right but You may have desires to go to clean energy, but you may not have capabilities in that those bringing up those capabilities may take.

10 years 20 years to bring on, you know a broad change to do that. So the way the grid works. interestingly and from a power standpoint is You if I'm consuming power right now.

It must be instantaneously produced at that second that I'm consuming it. And storage is starting to change the game. Right caught some companies and industries are getting into that but the nature of how it fits into the global Narrative of climate change Etc.

Right now, I think is that the awareness stage like if you were to say, you know, you don't hear the narrative on the global stage saying okay planes are 50% of it and cars are 20% of it. And you know, what are the leading causes of energy consumption on the planet, right? I haven't ever seen, you know, unless you're really talking to debat Industry analysts.

the cost of data and yeah, that is the new goal that makes a world around it is the new fuel. It is the new context. You'll see a lot of these great things around open Ai and chat GPT, but the wealth of information behind that.

Is data and that data requires power? That's a very good point. So yeah, I think that's what's going on in the world.

Well, I know recently you had the drivers of change with your it sustainability impact survey last year and there were lots of interesting findings in in that again. Can you talk about that and maybe what you've learned from it? Yeah, the big thing is.

like, you know some of the things I mentioned are some of the things we've learned from it because the You know, we approached it first thinking the world was more uniform that was obviously correction. Right when we when we got into it. We're like, oh, wow the different people have different things.

The second thing is just the of awareness like for example a standard poster that you have in your home. 1500 watts so you put two pieces of bread in right? So two pieces of bread might be, you know, 750 watts per piece of toast.

We're talking about seven watts per terabyte of data. So and when you start talking about, you know that and you envision the things you're doing in the amount of power consumes versus what you could do with the data. You're finding that there's a lot of interesting parallels and in our survey.

People didn't understand really how much a lot really was in real life. Like yeah, and what does it make sense? What does it mean to be at work?

It's not like something we talk about like, you know, what a hundred dollars is you don't know what is really right. Now that makes sense light bulb is 40 Watts. What does that?

Yeah, you know the lumens, you know for lipo take 10,000 candles or something. Yeah. I totally see what you're saying.

Another area of that. I think where you were trying to bridge the gap with the survey or the it side of it and let's say the sustainability people and you know those departments. How do you bring those together?

So everyone's on the same page and they they each see how they can interplay obviously with this need as you mentioned for storage and energy. um from an IT personnel kind of the it Viewpoint of of it is The survey actually identified that people are understanding what waste is all about. Because you know you need to score data on something and typically that's something doesn't last forever four to five years.

It lasts them and you have to rebuy that something and it creates a lot of e-waste. so, um from an IT personnel what we've done with our approach and the Evergreen architecture that we have as a company means we don't we eliminate all that E-Waste that goes into the system by reusing things. So You know when customers sign up with us, we're responsible for it.

We give them a guarantee but they don't have to worry about disposal of assets and things that create all of this E-Waste and the industry. So I think that's the biggest kind of, you know, peace for an IT buyer. Um, you know, I think in the survey there are a bunch of key findings around like how many people have sustainability people like isn't dedicated function or is it a part-time ID job, right and you know, the other interesting thing it was funny.

I was talking to a company before I was talking to one of these it guys and he's like, but I don't get the bill for the energy facilities pays it it's the guys who you building and construction that like get the energy bill not the idea operator. So he's like you're giving this to me but like you need to figure out how to get this to my facilities guy because it's his budget not mine. So it's interesting some of these people Dynamics you see, you know in that and that came out in the sustainability survey as well in terms of you.

Who's responsible for energy to company? Is it a chief sustainability officer? Is it a facilities guy?

Or is it the IT guy sounds like they're still figuring all of that out. As you said because not every place has an individual sustainability person so dividing the responsibilities, but I know for the digital infrastructure side, there's definitely the interest in what you were just talking about measuring how much energy is going out because when people are looking to be more sustainable in it, they that's one of the things the first things that they're looking at. So I think what you were talking about earlier in terms of measuring and then giving someone a gauge to go from there is fascinating and I'm wondering where you see that affecting the industry going forward like from Pure Storage vantage point is into the industry of determining how much energy we're using in these data centers, since it is a growing concern that in the next 10 to 20 years.

The the use will be higher more land will be used for data centers and things like that. Yeah, I hope it becomes. And I think we're on the early side of let's drive this and push it and you know, create the transparency and visibility.

But you know, if I was a betting man, I would say that's just gotta happen to know. Right creating more energy Consciousness and awareness of what it takes, you know in storage. We always talk about like things like performance and capacity and availability in I do think this is on an equal footing of saying okay.

What does it mean? Like, what's the Energy Measurement as well? Right and I think It's early but you know the good news is I do think we're in a position in the market where we will you know, probably hopefully help accelerate the move to that transparency.

But it's great prakash. Thank you so much for joining us on Tech strong TV procrastorology really pleasure to speak with you and fascinating subject to look forward to learning more about it going forward. Thank you.

All right. Thanks. All right.

Well, thanks for staying with us on techstrong TV. We'll be right back.