Technology Reseller v43

01732 759725 08 TECH TRENDS UK tech sector has potential to slash emissions by two thirds in next 10 years The tech sector has the potential to reduce its global carbon emissions by 40% by 2030 (and by 68% in the UK) despite an eight-fold increase in global data traffic to more than 22 zettabytes (ZB) over the same period, claims a new report by Accenture and BT. The authors of Harnessing data to empower a sustainable future claim the tech sector can limit the Compound Annual Growth Rate in energy demand to just 1.3% over the next decade and reduce its global emissions by purchasing renewable electricity, setting and achieving science- based emissions reductions targets and driving improved energy efficiencies through 5G, fibre and the Cloud. The report cites the UK as a leader in this area, pointing out that investments in renewable electricity on the UK grid, the closure of the legacy public switched telephone network (PSTN) by the end of 2025 and the migration of customers onto full fibre and 5G networks could see sector carbon emissions in the UK decrease by up to 68% over the next decade. At the same time, the adoption of new technologies in the tech sector has the potential to benefit four emissions- intensive areas of the economy – electricity & heating, agriculture, manufacturing and smart living – and deliver an additional 8.5 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) in carbon savings through resource and material savings, increased energy efficiencies and improvements in renewable energy adoption. The report calls for more ambitious and widespread commitments to achieve global carbon reductions and outlines five key aims for the tech sector over the next decade: 1 to meet or exceed ambitious carbon reduction targets; 2 to invest in networks and operations to continue to improve energy efficiency; 3 to retire legacy technology, where possible; 4 to incentivise and enable the adoption of new technologies; and 5 to develop and roll-out cross-industry use cases for carbon enablement at scale. Andy Wales, Chief Digital Impact & Sustainability Officer at BT, said: “This report demonstrates the progress being made by BT and the rest of the technology sector in curbing emissions and sets the record straight around the emissions the sector is responsible for and the savings it enables. “We’re already using 100% renewable electricity worldwide, we’re building the next generation of fixed full fibre and 5G mobile networks across the UK, and we’re retiring legacy networks where possible. All of which supports our efforts to reduce our carbon footprint and to become a net zero emissions business by 2030 for our own operations and by 2040 for our supply chain and customer emissions.” One zettabyte is equal to one sextillion bytes (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000), a billion terabytes or a trillion gigabytes. www.bt.com/about Four out of five enterprises incur unnecessary public cloud costs More than four out of five organisations (82%) with workloads running in public clouds have incurred ‘unnecessary’ costs, according to a recent survey of 350 IT and cloud decision-makers in the UK and US by Virtana, provider of the industry’s first unified observability platform for migrating, optimising and managing application workloads across public, private, hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Key problems highlighted in The State of Hybrid Cloud and FinOps report include: n Disjointed tools: 72% of respondents say they are fed up piecing together disparate management tools to monitor and manage everything from infrastructure performance to cloud cost and migration readiness; 62% cobble together multiple tools, systems and custom scripts to gain a global view of cloud costs. n Silos: 68% of respondents say their teams operate in silos, with 70% admitting that limited collaboration hinders their ability to adapt quickly and improve business outcomes. n Unexpected costs: 82% of respondents have incurred unnecessary cloud costs, which can eat into budgets needed for other areas of transformation. n Lack of programmatic cost optimisation: 56% lack programmatic cloud cost management capabilities, which can mean either that teams are spending too much time managing cloud costs or that cloud waste is allowed to fester. n Lack of visibility across hybrid and multi-cloud environments: 84% of respondents run workloads in multiple public clouds. Yet 86% are unable to get a global view of cloud costs within minutes; 71% agree that limited visibility across the hybrid cloud environment hinders their ability to maximise value, creates inefficiencies and wastes time. n Risk and pressure on IT: 66% of respondents find it hard to gauge whether they are delivering the service levels the business needs; 65% agree that when there is an issue, they are hard- pressed to identify the business impact. Three quarters (77%) cite increased performance issues as one of the reasons pressure on cloud teams continues to rise. Virtana’s findings are consistent with a recent Gartner report, which predicts that 60% of infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders will encounter public cloud cost overruns that negatively impact their on- premises budgets to 2024 (www.gartner. com/smarterwithgartner/6-ways-cloud- migration-costs-go-off-the-rails). virtana.com/state-of-hybrid-cloud-and- finops-2021 Extended hybrid working brings freedom to ‘locked out’ workers An increase in hybrid working could bring 3.8 million people previously unable to work back into employment, including 1.5 million disabled people, 500,000 carers, 1.2 million parents and 600,000 unemployed, and enable part-time workers to increase their working hours. So claim Virgin Media O2 Business and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) in a new report that highlights the possible impact of more flexible working on the number of hours worked by the unemployed and part-time workers: n 45% of those currently unemployed say they would be able to start work again if they could do so remotely, including unemployed carers (52%), parents (49%) Tech trends: ICT in the UK today Harnessing data to empower a sustainable future Technology and emissions report Survey Report The State of Hybrid Cloud and FinOps ©2021 Virtana. All rights reserved. www.virtana.com September 2021