Many people still perceive climate change and ESG initiatives as areas that can only be addressed at a much higher level of influence, beyond the control of day to day jobs and efforts. However, If you take a closer look at how change is taking place over the years around ESG, the power of action no longer exclusively rests with large corporations and governments - it sits with people and communities. If working at VMware has taught me anything, it’s that we need to accelerate our ideas into action, choosing the role we want to play, tracking our progress, and making choices now to drive positive impact for the long term!
Personally, having a daughter accelerated the need for me to actively do something that would help drive an impact. Being a part of VMware’s global technical account management team, I integrate a customer success program to ensure that our solutions, products and services are really helping businesses achieve the right outcomes, while providing valuable feedback to our engineering and product teams. In short: I’m a customer advocate looking for ways to help customers improve their businesses and, as such, I started exploring how I could use this position to make a difference. I’m very grateful to have opportunities like this platform to be able to voice my aspirations and dreams of a better future.
Helping customers achieve sustainability goals
I joined VMware around eight years ago, and in 2020 I was very lucky to become a member of the Office of the CTO (OCTO). As a member of the OCTO and a sustainability ambassador at VMware, I gained the opportunity to understand different ways of how our VMware solutions can help customers with avoidance and reduction of their carbon footprint. Leveraging a bit of my previous experience as a TAM, I can provide customers with rich technical environmental analysis for optimisation and platform health, so I started working with amazing colleagues and partners to look at how their configuration data can also investigate and pinpoint areas for decarbonisation improvement. This is where the same type of telemetry can be used to measure, monitor and benchmark customer’s carbon footprint, extracting accurate business insights to help transform their environment and help them achieve carbon reduction goals. But this is only the first step.
As more companies digitally transform, maintaining accountability towards sustainability targets is becoming more critical. As a whole, ESG and corporate sustainability are part of a very topical boardroom conversation in many large organisations, and we are already seeing green agendas driving enormous change in the ICT industry. There is endless potential for decarbonisation and continuous improvement due to the rich data available - companies just need to know where and how to find it.
Being a Sustainability Ambassador at VMware
At VMware, we hold the culture of EPIC2 values very close to our hearts and strive to focus on Execution, Passion, Integrity, Customers, and Community in every facet of our job functions. We apply these as key principles to become a force for good, promoting change in our lives, in our customers and within our community. Putting into practice, initiatives like VMware’s yearly ESG report help us keep in check with our progress and goals.
Other Sustainability Ambassadors that are part of the team come from various lines of business, but the core message prevails: to help everyone become more conscious about sustainability, and to help customers meet sustainability goals through services and solutions.
Envisioning a sustainable future
It’s great to see that the next generation is very passionate about climate change. However, for solving a global problem like climate change, we need to see more collaboration and unified approach across countries, industries and geo-political leadership. It would be phenomenal if formal regulatory bodies from different countries and organisations created measures to help govern and ensure proper carbon tracking and reporting. It is unfortunately very deregulated at the moment, but with a global standard to work towards and reliable data, we could be in a better position to help progress worldwide standards and define frameworks for everyday consumption of carbon.
We all live a highly consumer-driven lifestyle, so let’s imagine this future for our next generation: if we could check the carbon footprint of each commodity as an “energy star rating,” wouldn’t it help us envision the real cost of it and reevaluate our choices, pushing companies to also change how they make their products? I’m thrilled to see that some businesses are already taking steps in that direction, like some of the biggest banks, who help customers track their personal carbon emissions via their banking apps. Some of our large mining and resources customers in Australia have announced and are working towards significant targets such as 50% carbon reduction by 2030, expanding into their scope 1 and scope 2 carbon footprint contributions which could amount to a lot, given the industry output. We have a range of great customers taking a long-term view, where VMware and our Zero Carbon Committed partners are actively collaborating and helping with their sustainability business outcomes.
So as you can tell, data and actionable business intelligence with green metrics are just one of the ways that technology can be used to build a better future. Now I pose the question back to you: how do you envision a sustainable future?
Thinking of more ESG initiatives, I am also pleased to share that VMware’s 2022 ESG Report is now live. You can find out more about our initiatives and commitments here.