The Four Cs of Sustainability

This article was written by Geoff Greenlaw at Pure Storage.

For those of us lucky enough to live in the Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA) region, we enjoy an incredibly diverse range of climates, cultures, and histories. Yet, one thing we share is a limited amount of energy to power our homes and businesses, without causing unnecessary harm to the planet. 

Embracing sustainable IT solutions can help all of us live better lives—but they must incorporate the four Cs of sustainability: cost, consumption models, containerization, and climate. Let's look at each and how all four can help future-proof a customer's operational costs for the long term.

Cost: Can you afford it?

The topic of budget always plays a role in deciding how to invest in infrastructure. IDC reported that businesses in EMEA are projected to spend 42.9% on servers and storage for cloud enablement through 2024. Their goals: business continuity, disaster recovery, and security. But how does sustainability factor in? Will this investment account for the explosive growth of data?

I'd argue that it's a good starting point, provided the storage solutions deliver exceptional performance using less power and requiring fewer meters in the data center. Pure Storage® FlashArray™ and FlashBlade® were built this way from day one. Partners who work with Pure to deliver sustainable storage and data management solutions can help identify and size the solution to fit budget requirements and support how customers consume data.

Consumption: Only pay for what you use

Pure's Evergreen™ portfolio of solutions give customers the power to choose how they consume and deploy storage—from traditional purchases, to flexible pay-as-you-go ownership, or as a true as-a-service offering. This means less forecasting, less waste, and less overspend. Only Pure technology offers this financial flexibility and operational agility. 

By not owning the IT assets that power a company, many businesses experience a reduction in costs—initially. Yet, it's important to understand the long-term financial impact. Our partners are seeing a growing number of customers who want to move some data back on-premises. That's where containerization can be the path to follow for sustainable infrastructures.

Containerization: Managing the hybrid solution

As customers investigate how to cut the cost of cloud-based environments for better sustainability, they need to maintain high levels of utilisation of their data and deploy excellent management tools to ensure the business stays up and running. Containers have become a mainstream method to manage the flow, storage, processing, and analysis of a company's data. Portworx® by Pure Storage® is designed to be used for applications running on Kubernetes to provide:

• A fully integrated solution for persistent storage
• Data protection
• Disaster recovery
• Data security
• Cross-cloud and data migrations
• Automated capacity management lk

Climate: Lessen the impact

I started this blog acknowledging that companies operating in EMEA face challenges. It's incumbent on Pure and our partners to provide a data growth model that is both sustainable and allows for secure and safe expansion—for our region and every other around the world. 

With all the improvements in energy efficiency, smaller carbon footprints, better data security, and improved management, a customer working with Pure's global partner ecosystem gains a more sustainable IT infrastructure. We can leverage the scale and market reach of our partners to bring these benefits to customers across EMEA. Pure and our partners are ready to help you lower costs and become more sustainable with your storage and data management needs. Are you ready?

Learn more about WWT and Pure's joint capabilities.