VMware Zero Carbon Committed is a global initiative aiming at decreasing the negative environmental impact of digitalization by lowering carbon emissions among VMware partners. Beyond.pl, a supplier of data centers and cloud services, is the first firm in Poland to achieve the program’s standards and join the project.
VMware Zero Carbon Committed is a program in which IT organizations who collaborate with VMware work to become completely carbon-free. This aim will be achieved in stages until 2030, when all participants will be required to use only renewable energy sources. This year, the project’s participants must attain a green energy use percentage of at least 25%. This criterion will be increased each year, and VMware will monitor the partners’ success.
So far, 29 of the American vendor’s partners have joined the program internationally, out of a community of over 10,000. Beyond.pl was the first and thus far only Polish provider to join the project, and it has already achieved all of the initiative’s primary goals. Beyond.pl claims to have been devoted to sustainable growth for years, and that it has been using only green energy to power its data centers since 2020.
Climate Responsibility
“From the very beginning, we have been guided by the principles of sustainable development. All our facilities are designed to be as energy-efficient as possible and we are committed to minimizing the carbon footprint of our server rooms,” said Wojciech Stramski, CEO of Beyond.pl – the operator of 100% climate-neutral data centers. “VMware is one of the technology providers we have been working with the longest. We are therefore very pleased to learn that our partner shares the same values and promotes an approach that we fully identify with. Initiatives of this kind are necessary today, especially since the ICT industry – due to global digitalization – already has an increasing impact on the amount of CO2 generated, and these numbers will only keep growing year after year. We believe that the industry, the companies, and each of us individually, should take an increasing amount of responsibility for our carbon footprint.”
Beyond.pl Data Center 2 is an example of one of the most energy-efficient server rooms in Poland, achieving a PUE ratio of 1.2 which is a very energy efficient figure on European level. The heat generated in the server rooms is also used to heat the company’s office building on the Pozna site.
Sustainable Impact on the Industry
The VMware program and partnership with Beyond.pl are part of a growing trend of companies launching initiatives aimed at including the ICT and data center industries in long-term growth. Beyond.pl joined the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact and the European Green Digital Coalition as a founding member last year. Initiatives like these attempt to reduce gas emissions not just by IT providers, but also by updating technology and adopting transparent guidelines for analyzing the ICT sector’s environmental effect.
“The ICT industry as a whole already accounts for 1 percent of global energy consumption, and by 2030, it may even reach 10 percent. This translates into ever-rising CO2 emissions and a negative impact on the environment,” said Adam Sikora, Country Manager at VMware Polska. “We do not want to stand idly by and just watch the market and the environment change. VMware has been zero-carbon since 2018, but we want the entire industry to reduce its carbon footprint. That is why our Zero Carbon Committed program encourages our partners around the world to go green. We are able to share our experiences and solutions. I believe that by joining forces with environmentally aware partners such as Beyond.pl, we can have a real impact on the entire ICT industry.”
Encouraging data centers and cloud service providers to migrate to renewable energy sources reduces commercial organizations’ long-term carbon impact. Clients may rest certain that their corporate resources preserved in the cloud or in the colocation model do not harm the world, as is the case with carbon-intensive partners, thanks to their IT services provider’s climate neutrality.
A Matter of Quality and Ecology
Last year, Aberdeen analysts completed and published a report titled ‘The Sustainable Cloud Market’ on behalf of VMware. The institution looked into the advantages and disadvantages of firms who want to completely eliminate CO2 emissions. It turns out that businesses’ green initiatives are not only good for the environment, but also provide value to the bottom line.
According to Aberdeen experts, organizations that take a zero-carbon strategy are more inventive and efficient in their use of new cloud technology. According to the survey, such businesses are 50% more likely to employ hybrid clouds. When compared to their “traditional” carbon-intensive equivalents, as many as 60 percent of the climate-neutral enterprises examined were better at cost optimization. Green enterprises are also twice as likely to employ numerous clouds at the same time (multicloud) and have more flexibility.
