Pure Storage Survey Shows Low Awareness of Sustainability in IT and Digital Transformation Decision-Making in Japan

Pure Storage, Inc. shared the findings of a survey it commissioned among sustainability program managers from across all industries in Japan to gauge the level of understanding on how IT can contribute to sustainability initiatives.

The findings show that more effort needs to be made in elevating sustainability in corporate objectives especially with regards to lowering energy usage in technology infrastructure.

Survey highlights:
The Pure Storage-commissioned survey, conducted by Macromill, Inc., reached out to 220 sustainability program managers and found the following:

Sustainability still not top priority for many organizations

• Only 30% of respondents indicated that their management was prioritizing sustainability initiatives the highest.
• 52.7% said that sustainability was viewed as part of CSR (corporate social responsibility) and 9.5% said it was part of public relations.

Role of IT in sustainability efforts

• 42.7% of respondents did not think technology infrastructure was a priority in sustainability initiatives.
• Only 38.6% said that carbon emissions and power consumption was an important criteria in adopting technology with 65.5% saying that sustainability was not a top consideration when selecting technology vendors.

Sustainability considerations in digital transformation

• Only 37.7% of respondents indicated that sustainability was a top priority in Digital Transformation (DX) projects.
• Only 32.7% of respondents said that sustainability was being adequately considered in DX.

Industry significance:

According to the energy supply and demand report from Japan’s Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, data centers accounted for 2.1% of the total domestic power consumption of 913.5 billion kWh in 2020.

However, due to the rapid expansion of data utilization as a result of the  acceleration of DX and the proliferation of AI and other emerging technologies, the amount of data is expected to increase exponentially. The Ministry of the Environment estimates that data centers’ share of total power consumption will exceed 10% by 2030. Data centers will be required to take further energy-saving measures in the future.

Reducing the power consumption of data centers and IT infrastructure, as well as reducing the carbon footprint generated by digitization, is an increasingly important part of an organization’s sustainability strategy. Achieving sustainability goals requires a sustainable IT infrastructure that is characterized by high efficiency, scalability and simplicity.

Within an organization, IT departments in particular play an important role in sustainability efforts. Pure Storage recommends that careful consideration of sustainable technology infrastructure that significantly reduces power consumption, cooling power, and waste is an important first step.

“With data continuing to grow, energy and space efficiency must play a stronger role in IT and data centre technology selection. IT leaders can and should play a bigger role in their organization’s sustainability initiatives by improving their data storage strategies,” said Rob Lee, CTO, Pure Storage.

“As data volumes grow exponentially, it becomes increasingly important to reduce the environmental impact of data infrastructure. Digital transformation need not suffer as a result of sustainability targets. With the right technologies, organizations can continue to pursue digital transformation while reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions,” said Yoshiyuki Tanaka, president, Pure Storage Japan.

“Pure’s report is a timely reminder for all companies in Japan to think more carefully about their technology decisions and how they impact environmental sustainability. Tokyo Electron Device places a high priority on sustainability both internally and externally with our customers and we will continue to help them reduce their carbon footprint through the use of sustainable technologies,” said Takayoshi Miyamoto, managing director, Tokyo Electron Device Ltd.

Resources:
The full report Survey report on the current state of sustainability and IT issues in Japan‘s DX promotion (Japanese only).
Check out Pure’s new Energy Savings Visualizer, which enables organizations to calculate estimated electricity cost savings based on performance or capacity-optimized block, file, or object storage.