Sustainability with Cloud Hosting – Leah Goldfarb, Platform.sh

This is texturing TV. I'm Bonnie Schneider sustainability contributor to techstrong TV. Today.

sh is not only helping their clients minimize the environmental impact of their applications by hosting them in the cloud. The company is committed to reducing their own carbon footprint by 50% by 2030 Leah. Thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you for the invitation. sh? And of course what inspired you to become an environmental impact officer?

All right, I'd love to so I have a PHD in physical chemistry. I started working on looking at the how our atmosphere Works in my doctorate work and then quickly transition to science policy to look at questions of sustainability and give synthesis of scientific results to decision makers. sh a year ago and it was the word impact in the in the job invite that really motivated me to join.

This is my first job in the private sector and I really am interested in moving from Theory to action. That's great. s overall mission and why is it so important to the company?

sh with our co-founders Fred play has supported us signing up. The climate act which is a French initiative and that we committed to undertaking carbon Audits and Publishing them publicly as well as 50% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2030 is part of that. But our other two co-founders Ori beckleman and Damian torno have also been big proponents of sustainability and our investors ask for ESG environmental social and governance information every year as well.

So we're very conscious of measuring using metrics to track our progress over time. You know, I just like to take a deeper dive into that about how you use your metrics and and can you walk us through the process? Yeah, so what we found from doing now two years and we're now working on our third kind is our biggest impact by far is in the cloud so over 80% of all of our missions over the cloud.

So we're focusing our attention there and we have what's called a mode strategy to address Cloud emissions. We measure, Using carbon audits using a third-party carbon auditor. We optimize we have an orchestration in the cloud that is up to 12 times more dense than an elastic Cloud instance of AWS.

That's a number given to us by our Auditors. We also ask that our clients optimize their code by using an APM application performance Monitor and profiling their code to deal with bottlenecks. And then we deploy the D of mode to Greener region you think about the underlying electricity grid for that data center and then at e is part for educate we say that humbly we educate ourselves we do research and we love to be invited in to to take strong today to discuss this and really raise the consciousness of the importance of understanding carbon emissions in the cloud.

sh is committed to reducing their own carbon footprint by 50% by 2030. So that seems like a very ambitious goal and I'm wondering what are the steps and not even that far away now that we're 2023. Can you talk about how you plan to achieve that?

Yeah, sure. So the the short answer is through migration of our projects to Greener regions. So we're undertaking that right now to move from data centers that use high carbon intensity regions to low carbon intensity regions.

And while this sounds ambitious, it's completely aligned with the eu's green deal in Europe. In fact, these Ambitions have been put even higher to 57% So we'll be backing that as well. But we really know we're working in the area where we can have the biggest impact which is in the cloud and migrating to Great regions.

For those that are watching we have a global audience, but let's say that some people are considering doing this migration to the cloud and having a strong less of an environmental impact. Can you explain how you would help to minimize clients potential clients environmental impact through Cloud hosting Yeah, exactly. I'd love to so just as you said going from on-premise to the cloud you're going to have you're gonna lower your carbon emissions that way and then what we do you come to us as a new client and you're spend up your new project.

We give you visibility not only to choose the cloud provider you want but we also provide the carbon intensity of the underlying grid. So we allow our clients to choose the lowest carbon data center that in a list now for sometimes they have compliance issues and they must stay in within a particular country and we understand that but we do try to empower our clients to choose the cleanest region. So what are some of the cleaner regions in the world that you're seeing now?

Yeah, so a lot of the data centers that have a low carbon data centers are the ones that are using hydropower. So you see that in Quebec for example in the west coast of the United States around Quincy Washington and then also in Sweden in Europe, these are some of the big ones that that use really low carbon data centers. That is so fascinating and it's it's some of it's an unexpected places that you may not think and going back since our audience is filled with a lot of people who work in tech and and development.

Can you explain some of the challenges that you face and implementing these sustainability initiatives and how you've addressed them? Yeah, so I always say this sustainability is a team effort. So this is a very transverse Soul component, but people in the tech in you know industry as I mentioned really trying to look at your code updating to the most recent version of code that you can reduce emissions that way profiling your code discussing with people around you but really as much as possible measuring and that's what's interesting about these code profilers because they can measure how fast you are.

Your program is working and that can be you know, a type of metric for how much electricity is being used. So it's a win-win for for developers when they profile their code. They get faster code that uses less electricity.

So that's one way and then globally, you know, just trying to measure for your company. How many well we are 100% remote company. So we have a very small office.

The electricity water other resources there we measure carefully. But then we also measure the travels of our employees their meals. We did a survey for that to get the real carbon audits from that and of course we we have the auditor.

Okay. So what advice would you have for tech companies that are looking to prioritize sustainability in their business practices? Yeah, so, um, you know just I would say be aware of the big picture the ESG picture.

Now, there are some new standards that are coming out in Europe csrd. There's a corporate for sustainability reporting standards that are coming out and they say, you know, you should have a carbon audit as part of this reporting and it should follow the greenhouse gas protocol, which is the international standard for carbon Audits and you know, make sure you get a third party that that is reputable to help you with that and then educate, you know, the sea level to the importance of this and the changes the laws that are coming into place and then work with your team. sh has in the work that you can share with us?

So we have a climate friendly travel policy that we've put in place that really encourages people particularly in Europe to take the train whenever possible rather than the plane we have also an environmental policy generally and we have an environmental procurement policy. So we're trying to really track and monitor how our resources are used. And how money is spent on our on these resources particularly it equipment from us.

While speaking of it as I mentioned our audience are mostly Works in Tech. So I'm wondering if you could provide some advice or insight for those that are working in in these areas, like devops devsecops cyber or Cloud native of what can they do in their own roles to contribute to a more sustainable future. So first, I would say that's great we need.

all Is on Deck moment for the climate, um, you know, there's this new movement within the deaf Community about ecological design of code, including the right choice of language. There are certain languages that are lower in terms of resource uses than others. So that's one good place to start.

There's also certifications for ecological design of code. But by far the biggest win that you can have if you're in the cloud is to really look at where which data center you're using it. Is it in for example a region that's being fueled by coal.

And if that's the case, can you migrate to to a cleaner region? That really good insight and some of the points that you've made I haven't heard before so I really appreciate your expertise Leah gold from our all the way coming to us from Europe. Thank you so much for joining us on Tech strong TV.

sh Leah was a pleasure to have you on today. Thank you very much for this opportunity. I really much enjoyed speaking with you.

Wonderful. All right. We'll stay with us.

We're going to have more on Tech strong TV right after this.