Driving Sustainable IT: HPE’s Innovative Solutions – Sue Preston, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

This is Techstrong tv. Hi everyone, I'm Bonnie Schneider, and thanks for joining me on Techstrong TV Today, our guest is Sue Preston, the vice president and general manager of WW Advisory and Professional Services at Hewlett Packard Enterprise or H P e. With over 28 years of experience in it, Sue provides invaluable insights into accelerating r o I and digital transformation while reducing carbon footprints.

Sue, it's a pleasure to have you on here. Thank you, Bonnie. Pleasure to be here.

Can you share more about your background and how you got into sustainability in it? Yeah, so Bonnie, I I, if I reflect back to the beginning of my journey, I was, um, in IT recruitment actually many moons ago when I, when I left school. And then if I fast forward, I've always had a passion for, um, physics and science as well as, um, being a force for good, you know, doing, doing good for everybody.

And it wasn't till about four years ago, I represented, um, one of my leaders at Davos, and it got me curious. It got me really curious on how can it really be the catalyst to make a change, um, and how can we really drive efficiency in order to make impact on the planet? So that's where it all came from.

That's great. Well, how is Hewlett Packard enterprise assisting organizations in reducing their IT carbon footprint? Yeah, so great question.

I think, um, throughout our heritage, we've always been focused, and one of the key drivers at the moment is lots of board members, um, investors and employees are looking at how they can drive and measure, uh, carbon emissions and energy consumption. So what we did back in June was we launched our IT sustainability dashboard, and we also modernized a portfolio of services that can help customers drive more efficiency across the IT landscape. And, you know, it's critical for those organizations to look at that footprint and how then that can reduce the carbon impact and the carbon footprint.

You know, that's such a good point. Our audience, um, right now watching our, uh, many people that work in the IT field and they're probably being tasked by their employers, Hey, we need to reduce emissions, measure emissions, track emissions. Um, how does the dashboard, can you explain a little more about how it addresses those needs?

Yeah. Well, I think if, if I look at, um, a step before, um, the dashboard as well, so if I look at the engagement with the customers, they need to know where they can start to measure. So what we do is we join customers wherever they are on their journey and with our H P E GreenLake platform, with the IT sustainability dashboard that enables them to look at all of their, um, to do an assessment of all of their workloads, whether they're running on-prem in the private cloud, and also with the, um, data center environment.

So it, it gives them visibility because you can't improve something that you can't measure. So it's giving them the ability to measure and look at those workloads wherever they're running on-prem in, uh, private clouds and in co-location data centers. That makes sense.

Well, sustainability standards are, are regulations are evolving rapidly. You're based in the UK kind of, uh, in the EU ahead of the US in a lot of ways when it comes to these areas of standards and regulations. So it's kind of hard to keep track.

How does H P E ensure that its solutions and services remain compliant and adaptable to these changing requirements? Yeah, well, I think it's great because we have our living progress, um, team. So if we look at the heritage of innovation that Hewlett Packard Enterprise Drive, then our Living Progress team reports and we had our, our latest living progress report in the public domain in June.

Um, and that really helps us look at how we keep up to speed. And as you mentioned, I'm based in the UK and I recently represented the European Commission on some of the legislation and directives that are coming through on decarbonization across across am, uh, across Europe. So it is, it's a mammoth task to keep up to date, but we've got some fantastic teams that support us across the business.

That's great. So you really, uh, yourself, uh, kind of are in the know and, uh, keeping your, um, clients and customers aware of, of how to stay compliant, that's wonderful. But business leaders are also prioritizing r o I and digital transformation, and I think that a lot of the people that I've spoken to have to deal with broader business objectives and how they might be able to keep everything compliant, but also keep the cost in line.

Uh, but what is, what is your take on that? Yeah, fantastic, because I think if we look at, I mean, Accenture did, um, uh, some analysis and reviews, so organizations that are all driving digital transformation, when you look at aligning digital transformation with the, um, sustainable it, uh, transformation and maturity, you're two and a half times more likely to be the most leading brands. So looking at organizations that are joining forces, then that is going to help them really drive that r o i some of the other areas as well, because we all all know, and everybody in the IT world knows about over provisioning.

Um, you know, we classic as zombie servers. Um, and looking at workloads of what's being more efficient. So again, that comes back to the efficiency measures on infrastructure, environmental, um, and, you know, organizations know that they'll be the strongest performers if they're, if they're aligning their it, uh, sustainability with digital transformation initiatives.

Can you share some examples of success stories of organizations that have achieved, um, their sustainability improvements and cost efficiency through, uh, the dashboard? Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's interesting to look at because when there's numerous customers that I'm engaged with in my worldwide role across advisory and professional services, if I look at a, um, uh, a recent, um, example as well. I mean, when I was at Discover in, um, Las Vegas, I had the pleasure to be on stage with Danfoss.

So Danfoss were going through a major transformation of their core, um, uh, SS a P environments. And they also had, um, some challenges with regards to flood risk in their data centers. So that was the start of the journey to look at how they drove that transformation, where they, um, engaged with our sustainable data center transformation teams, and then more importantly, how they're measuring post transformation.

So those are the areas really that can drive value. And I think with customers that are able to have the insight with regards to carbon emissions and also energy consumption, that will help them then make decisions on where those workloads are deployed or redeployed, depending on, you know, the impact that the environment on the environment and the, the, uh, cost efficiencies that they can, they can drive. What do you see in terms of trends in the sustainable IT space?

I think as you mentioned, Bonnie, it's it's, it's challenging to keep up to speed with the legislation. If I look at organizations that are aligned to the science-based targets on their, um, net zero ambitions, it's how are they having plan, how, how have they got a re re robust plan in place to measure, um, looking at the data, looking at the it, um, infrastructure space. And I think it is, it's something where it takes a team of people within organizations to ensure that they're keeping up to speed and that they're adapting and they're more agile, um, to drive forward, you know, across, um, the scope scopes that they can control.

But also then, you know, looking at scope three as well, which is use of products. So it's looking at measuring across the board. And what advice would you have for, um, anyone watching that may be just beginning on this journey?

I think don't be fearful. I think that there, the, the challenge that, um, organizations that I speak to is the different personas within the organization and the responsibilities. My view is it's everybody's responsibility.

And I think people, you'll find people in your organizations that have got a passion to make a difference and drive an impact in being a force for good. But then you've also, um, you know, you've got to start with looking at where you currently are, the baseline of your maturity of achieving some of those while setting the targets and looking at the operating model. I mean, one of the areas that I look at is that you, we have, um, an edge to cloud adoption framework, which we've modernized across 20 different domains.

So it helps organizations get a baseline of where you are today and then set realistic targets, commit to them, and then going execute against that plan. Well, thank you very much. Sue Preston, vice President and general manager of WW Advisory and Professional Services at H P E.

We appreciate you sharing your expertise on reducing IT carbon footprints, and of course, the role in of sustainability in today's digital landscape. Thank you. Thank you, Bonnie.

Pleasure. Well stay with us on Techstrong tv. We're going to have more great conversations like this one coming up.