Hewlett Packard Enterprise helps organizations reduce IT carbon footprint

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has announced the preview of a new sustainability dashboard on the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform and a comprehensive portfolio of sustainability services. The offerings, which span technology, services, financing, and asset upcycling programs, are designed to help organizations reduce the carbon footprint associated with their IT estates. 

“Achieving sustainability targets in a hybrid IT environment can be complex and daunting,” said Pradeep Kumar, senior vice president and general manager, HPE Services. “HPE breaks down this complexity with technologies and services that enable organizations to advance from strategy and design to operations and positive impact. Our unique, comprehensive approach helps customers transform sustainability initiatives from incremental pockets of activity to a holistic approach spanning every IT domain.”

According to Gartner®, 86% of business leaders see sustainability as an investment which protects their organization from disruption. In turn, four out of five leaders indicated that sustainability helped their organization to optimize and reduce costs, and 83% also indicated their sustainability program activities directly created both short- and long-term value for their organization1. Organizations of all sizes have announced plans to reach their sustainability targets but making progress towards those goals is not simple. Challenges often include lack of visibility and metrics, a shortage of specialized expertise, and an escalating and complex regulatory environment.

Preview of the new sustainability dashboard on the HPE GreenLake platform

To help organizations monitor, observe, and reduce their energy consumption within their IT estate, HPE will soon offer a new sustainability dashboard on the HPE GreenLake platform that delivers key insights on IT energy consumption, carbon emissions, and electricity costs. The dashboard will leverage advanced analytics from the HPE portfolio across compute, storage, and networking to improve overall sustainability performance.

New technology from OpsRamp, which HPE acquired in May 2023, will provide additional sustainable IT capabilities to the dashboard by delivering a unified approach to manage multi-vendor infrastructure and application resources in hybrid and multi-cloud IT environments. The sustainability dashboard, which is currently being previewed with select clients, will help move organizations from the ideation and design stages of sustainable modernization into operations.

Fidelma Russo, CTO, HPE will showcase the sustainability dashboard during her keynote at HPE Discover 2023, on Wednesday, June 21st at 10 AM PST. The new capability will be available to customers later this year.

Achieve sustainable modernization starting from the workload

To support organizations on their transformation journey, HPE delivers a unique workload-in approach, utilizing an array of tools and processes, to address environmental and sustainability goals and efficiently plan for modernization. The enhanced sustainability services include two new capabilities that bridge technology and data center facility solutions to offer an analysis of an organization’s overall consumption.

New workshops that explore a combined and sustainable approach to IT, workloads, and data centers are now available to customers seeking to begin their journey.

New sustainability baselining services provide a clear picture of energy usage and emissions within their IT estate by considering commonly accepted accounting and reporting principles.

Customers also now have access to the newly enhanced HPE Right Mix Advisor a process used to identify application modernization and hosting requirements. Its new capabilities allow HPE to build an analysis of workload power consumption and calculate carbon footprint, collectively, or at the application level. This process is paired with the redesigned HPE Edge-to-Cloud Adoption Framework to enable support of sustainable IT goals in an organization’s operating model.

Danfoss, a global engineering company, was hampered by two key challenges – a legacy SAP environment and flood-prone data centers.

“Danfoss focuses on sustainability,” said Sune Baastrup, senior vice president and CIO, Danfoss. “Within our own ecosystem we had challenges with our legacy SAP environment, while also addressing potential flooding threats to our data centers. We addressed both, simultaneously with the help of HPE. It was essential to solve these issues with sustainability outcomes. The modular data center approach from HPE not only ensures energy efficiency and quick deployment but also enables sustainable data center expansion. HPE also reduced energy usage through the modernization of our SAP workload, aligning with our commitment to sustainability. Now, we’re collaborating with HPE on identifying mutual sustainability solutions like ultra-efficient waste heat reuse for data centers."

New sustainable IT operations to reduce carbon footprint

Additional new capabilities include services and solutions to gain visibility, control, and management capabilities of an organization’s IT and data center carbon footprint.

New operational services that provide customers with a continuum of sustainability features including access to dedicated experts, asset upcycling services, customized Circular Economy Reports, and access to additional certifications.

Education is an additional layer of operational coverage and is supported with the refreshed HPE Digital Learner – an online learning subscription service that now includes sustainable upskilling for IT and data center facility employees. Customers can now offer their employees access to the ITIL® 4 certificate: Sustainability in Digital and IT and the EPI Certified Data Center Environmental Sustainability Specialist (CDESS®) certifications directly from HPE.

Thésée Data Center, a Tier IV-certified French colocation provider, prioritized sustainable IT operations during the commissioning of its facility and partnered with HPE to ensure success. “Among the many services HPE provided was the design of an innovative free cooling solution featuring artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to better control and optimize energy consumption at the facility,” said Eric Arbaretaz, CTO and co-founder, Thésée. “This solution with HPE Services has enabled us to meet our sustainability goals and also to deliver energy-efficient colocation services to our customers.” 

Expanding the ‘Force for Good’ program to SMBs

The HPE Financial Services Force for Good Financing Program, announced earlier this year, rewards organizations that demonstrate a measurable commitment to sustainability. HPE is expanding the program to include additional industry-recognized standard indexes2, which increases the number of small and mid-sized businesses (SMB) eligible for the program. When this program is combined with HPE Asset Upcycling Services, organizations can support broader sustainability initiatives through all stages of the IT asset lifecycle, from planning to removal.  

“HPE Financial Services unlocks value from legacy IT assets to fund organizations’ transitions to more efficient technology, and gives those older assets new life through upcycling, all of which leads to a beneficial circular economy,” said Gerri Gold, executive vice president, president and CEO, HPE Financial Services. “Today, we are building on this commitment to sustainability by expanding our Force for Good financing program, which rewards organizations for progress they achieve on their sustainability initiatives. Combined with the visibility and insights from the sustainability dashboard on HPE GreenLake, and the comprehensive expertise from the HPE Services team, HPE is well equipped to act as a strategic partner to any organization seeking to reduce their IT carbon footprint and make progress on sustainability.”

HPE Asset Upcycling Services new charitable giving program

Organizations can now have funds donated to several reputable non-profit partners as they decommission retired IT assets and enable a second life through HPE Asset Upcycling Services.

Project Drawdown, one of the world’s leading resources for climate solutions, and UNICEF, which works to protect and care for children worldwide, are just two examples of the non-profit organizations that can be selected as part of this program.