Beyond.pl is the first Polish partner of VMware Zero Carbon Committed program

VMware Zero Carbon Committed is a global program for VMware partners aimed at reducing the negative impact that digitalization has on the environment by reducing carbon emissions.

Beyond.pl, a data center and cloud services provider, is the first company in Poland to meet the program’s requirements and join the initiative.

VMware Zero Carbon Committed is an initiative as part of which IT companies partnering with VMware strive to become fully carbon neutral. This goal is to be pursued progressively until 2030 — the point when all participants will be expected to rely solely on renewable energy sources. This year, the entities involved in the project are required to achieve a green energy usage rate of at least 25%. This requirement will be increased each year, and the partners’ progress will be verified by VMware.

So far, 29 partners of the American vendor — out of a community of over 10,000 — have joined the program worldwide. The first, and so far the only, Polish provider to get involved in the project is Beyond.pl, and it has already met all the initiative’s key objectives. Beyond.pl has been committed to sustainable development for years, and since 2020 it has been powering its data center facilities solely with green energy, as confirmed by the certificate of origin the company has for all energy purchased.

Climate responsibility

– From the very beginning, we have been guided by the principles of sustainable development. All our facilities are designed to be as energy-efficient as possible and we are committed to minimizing the carbon footprint of our data centers and cloud services. VMware is one of the technology providers we have been working with the longest. We are therefore very pleased to announce that our partner shares the same values and promotes an approach that we fully identify with. Initiatives of this kind are necessary today, especially since the ICT industry – due to the rate of digitalization – is becoming ever more significant in terms of contributing to CO₂ emissions, and this impact will only keep getting larger year after year. We believe that the industry, the companies, and each of us individually, should take an increasing amount of responsibility for the carbon footprint that we have – said Wojciech Stramski, CEO of Beyond.pl, an operator of 100% climate-neutral data centers.

Modern data centers must rely not only on sustainable energy sources but also on technologies that allow for long-term energy savings. For that reason, operators should upgrade their facilities and the technologies they use. Beyond.pl Data Center 2 is an example of one of the most energy-efficient data centers in Poland, achieving a PUE ratio of 1.2 compared to the European average of 1.5-1.6. The company also recycles heat generated in its server rooms to heat its office building located on the campus in Poznan, Poland.

Sustainable impact on the industry

The VMware program and the cooperation with Beyond.pl are a reflection of a global trend of initiatives driven by the ICT sector aimed at engaging the ICT and data center industries towards transforming into fully  sustainable models. Last year, Beyond.pl became a founding member of the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact and the European Green Digital Coalition. Initiatives of this kind aim to reduce gas emissions by IT service providers, and upgrading technology, and developing transparent rules for assessing the impact of the ICT sector on the environment.

– As a whole, the ICT industry accounts for 1% of global energy consumption, and by 2030, it could reach the level of 10%. This obviously translates into increasing CO₂ emissions and an growing negative impact on the environment. We do not want to stand idle and observe the deterioration of the environment. VMware has been carbon neutral since 2018, but we want the entire industry to reduce its carbon footprint. That is why our Zero Carbon Committed program encourages our partners around the world to go green. And we can help by sharing our experiences and solutions. I believe that by joining forces with environmentally conscious partners such as Beyond.pl, we can have a real impact on the entire ICT industry – said Adam Sikora, Country Manager at VMware Polska.

Encouraging data center and cloud service providers to switch to renewable energy sources allows helping lower the carbon footprint of commercial companies. If companies select to work with IT service providers who are climate neutral, they can rest assured that their corporate resources maintained in the cloud or in the colocation model do not contribute to the pollution of the planet, which is the opposite if they select to work with carbon-intensive partners.

A matter of ecology and quality

On behalf of VMware, last year Aberdeen analysts conducted a study which was made public entitled “The Sustainable Cloud Market”. The institute explored the opportunities and challenges for companies that seek to reduce CO₂ emissions to zero. It turns out that companies’ green actions are not only positive for the environment, but also translate into added business value.

According to Aberdeen, companies that focus on the carbon-neutral approach are more innovative and use cloud technologies more efficiently. The study found that such companies are 50% more likely to use hybrid clouds. Green businesses are twice as likely to use multiple clouds at once (multicloud) and show greater flexibility than their non-green counterparts. As many as 60% of the climate-neutral businesses surveyed were more efficient at optimizing costs compared to their “classic” carbon-intensive counterparts.

Read more about the VMware program at: Zero Carbon (vmware.com).

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• Beyond.pl is the first Polish partner of VMware Zero Carbon Committed