FEATURE
Sustainability: A key focus for business operations Veritas Technologies, a California-based company that provides data management solutions, has made sustainability a key focus of its business operations. The company believes that sustainability is critical to its long-term success and to creating a better world, and has set ambitious targets to drive progress in this area.
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he latest research from Veritas comes at a very apt time for the UAE, with Cop 28 set to take place here later this year and 2023 being the Year of Sustainability. What were some of the main findings from this research?
This is indeed an exciting time for us to launch the findings of our study that focused on the impact of data-related pollution. The UAE has announced its commitment to curbing greenhouse gas emissions across the value chain, and as one of the region’s – if not the world’s – leaders in digital transformation, the impact of data storage on carbon footprint must be understood so that organisations can scale up action and support the nation’s journey towards net zero by 2050. There are some very interesting findings from UAE survey respondents within this research. For example, our study found
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that there is a high level of concern amongst UAE consumers about the environmental impact of poor data management by organisations. A majority (60 percent) of respondents in the UAE said that they are concerned about environmental pollution and avoidable energy wastage caused by online data storage. The UAE ranks third highest in the world in this sentiment, next only to China (65%) and France (62%), and significantly higher than the global average of 50 percent. Furthermore, compared to just 47 percent globally, nearly two-thirds (60%) of UAE respondents said they would stop buying from a company if they knew it was wilfully causing environmental damage by not controlling how unnecessary or unwanted data is managed.
To what extent do businesses storing unnecessary data harm the environment? Today with increased digitalisation of processes, data centres run 24x7 and are estimated to be using up as much as 8 percent of all electricity generated globally. Most of these centres are powered by fossil fuels and generate about the same amount of CO2 as the airline industry, which is why the opening of a solar-powered data centre by the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority is such a welcome move. But what makes it even more significant is understanding that much of the data stored in these centres is irrelevant. Typically half of the data that enterprises store is redundant, obsolete, or trivial (ROT).
