Green Code Initiative – Boris Gamazaychikov, Salesforce

This is techstrong tv. Joining me now is Boris Gama Chakov, the head of Emissions reduction program at Salesforce with a diverse background spanning the Pentagon Sustainable Construction Program to implementing corporate and real estate decarbonization strategies. Boris is now driving Salesforce's mission to slash carbon emissions across its entire value chain.

Boris, thank you so much for joining us. Really excited to be here. That's great.

Well, I'd like to start with our first question to kind of take a deep dive into the Green Code concept. If you could explain, um, what it is, uh, what's the story behind it and a little bit more about what you do at Salesforce. Yeah, definitely.

Um, you know, so at, at Salesforce, sustainability is one of our core values. Um, it's really, uh, one of the key Dr, uh, driving forces of our company. Um, and we're also, of course, a technology, a software company.

Uh, so Green Code really sits at the intersection of both of those focus areas. Um, we realize that the climate crisis is upon us, uh, and we have, uh, less than eight years by the end of the decade to cut the world's carbon emissions in half. Uh, so Salesforce is committed to bringing, uh, its entire power, uh, to doing that.

And so we look at things, uh, like decarbonizing our own emissions first and foremost, as well as bringing our customers along on the journey. Uh, we, we, we bring our customers, uh, to, uh, to the journey with, you know, NetZero Cloud, that's one of our, uh, software packages that is available to help others on this journey. And so, um, me, my work specifically is focused on looking at our emissions.

Um, and when, when we break down our emissions, that's scopes one, two, and three. So that's our full value chain. Uh, our cloud software usage, which is all related to our code, um, is responsible for about 52% of our emissions.

So this initiative was really critical, um, uh, and, and key in highlighting the need for the industry to come together, uh, to really partner between, uh, the software vendors, the cloud providers, and the customers that are using, uh, the software to work together and really find, uh, find ways to reduce these emissions. And so we're really excited to have brought forth, uh, you know, a, a first stab at this, a collection of best practices that folks using Salesforce technology and beyond can use, um, to start reducing these emissions. Can you tell us more about these best practices and a little bit more about Green Code and how it functions?

Yeah, definitely. Um, well, so the, the concept is, you know, as you said, uh, the, the information, uh, uh, and communication technology sector is responsible for almost 4% of global carbon emissions. You know, when we look downstream, uh, of that value chain, that's really the electricity that's powering the servers and the giant, you know, data center farms.

Um, but we think there's so much opportunity further upstream. What we mean by that is actually looking at the code that makes up the software applications that are requiring all these data centers. So when we say green code, we're talking about opportunities across the software development lifecycle to reduce emissions.

So from, uh, the software architecture, uh, you know, for example, the types of APIs you're using, there's, there's ways that those can be, uh, resource intensive, uh, or can be more efficient all the way to developing the, developing your actual software. Um, so there's ways to write code that similarly are efficient, more or less efficient. You know, it's like if you're driving a car from point A to point B, there's a lot of different ways to get there.

What's the way to get there, uh, that, that it takes less gas, so to speak. Um, moving on, you know, even from kind of the, the early stage design and user interface, um, development side of things, there's things you can do like making sure your, um, your media is, is right size, not, you know, not, uh, not oversized unnecessarily and spinning those servers unnecessarily. Um, and, and all the way onto your operations management.

How are you operating and deploying your software? Can it be deployed to cleaner cloud regions? Can it be deployed, uh, times of day when, uh, the sun is shining and renewable energy is more plentiful?

So really we're looking at opportunities across the full software development lifecycle, um, and to really just highlight, this isn't an exhaustive list, but to just highlight that technologist, the folks sitting behind the keyboard have a big role to play in reducing carbon emissions. Yeah, that's interesting. So it's, in your opinion, it's the entire life cycle, uh, uh, as for, for software development is really affected by, um, using Green Code.

Have you seen this with your own experience working, um, at Salesforce? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, um, you know, as a quick example from from early design, uh, you know, one of the things you're, you're doing is, is is getting the requirements and kind of setting the framework around what you're actually gonna be producing.

Uh, and there's a way to approach even that with sustainability in mind. Things like, uh, setting some of the default standards in, in your, whatever software you're creating to be the most sustainable option. Um, we've actually seen this, an interesting example, uh, with, with, uh, with cafes.

Some cafes are moving to make oat milk the default option, and you actually have to opt into a least, uh, less sustainable option. So doing things like that with, with software just as a design consideration is really key. And then of course, moving on to what, how you're using code, how you're using APIs, and then how, how and when and, and why you're deploying and managing, um, the software.

That's interesting. And I also did not know that about oat milk, so that's a useful tip too. When you're, when you're getting coffee, um, every new initiative of course faces challenges.

So what are some of the obstacles that companies might encounter when adopting Green Code and what strategies can they use to overcome them? Yeah, for sure. Um, this is a very new concept, um, in, in a very fast moving space.

Uh, we actually did some research. Uh, we, we, we, we put out a survey to really get a sense of, of the landscape and put some numbers to it. So we found that 75% of folks working in this space, uh, are, uh, are interested, uh, in, in using software to reduce their emissions.

But, uh, nearly half don't know how. And, uh, more than 60% don't include, uh, sustainability, you know, skills training in their, in their development programs. So it's definitely, uh, an area that's, um, that that's in, that's quite early.

And so I think just, um, getting, getting the necessary skills, getting, uh, you know, getting the right training, uh, will be one of the challenges. We've also seen a bit of a gap, uh, between the folks, you know, so to speak, on the ground, working on these projects, coding, um, and leadership in various companies. Uh, just, you know, from from the survey we definitely saw discrepancy between the interest and the, the need for this, um, kind of at those, at those levels.

Um, but what's what's great is we've seen, uh, a coalescence of, of various organizations, um, like the Green Software Foundation is one that has a lot of really great open source tools, learnings, uh, they even have a, a Green Software practitioner's course that's totally free. Um, so we're, we're really starting to expand with, uh, with the options here for folks. That sounds great.

Um, given Salesforce's own commitment to reducing emissions, how does Green Code align with and support your own internal targets? Yeah, absolutely. Um, so we, we've achieved net zero residual emissions, but at the same time, we have a goal to reduce, uh, our, our emissions that we can't match with carbon credits to reduce those emissions, um, by, by 50% by 2030.

Uh, and so, uh, you know, as I mentioned before, our cloud infrastructure is more than half of our total emissions currently. Um, you know, and the company is expected to grow. So, uh, if we're gonna cut those in half, uh, that a lot of that is gonna have to come from this kind of cloud infrastructure chunk, which ultimately all comes from, um, from code one way or another.

Uh, and so we, we found that iden, uh, working on code efficiency, um, is a really, uh, it's, it's an untapped leverage point because we've been doing great work and others as well, um, on things like our hardware efficiency, um, greener data centers, putting more renewable energy on the grid to power those data centers. Uh, and we'll continue to do that work, but that's a bit further downstream. If we can go upstream and Im, uh, and impact the code, impact the software before it ever spins up those servers, um, there's a big opportunity for emissions reduction.

And since you've been really focused on this green code, uh, what, what have you found so far and how have you been able to track and measure it in terms of, uh, okay, we're this is really making a difference. Yeah, for sure. So, uh, you know, a a lot of companies, uh, have this notion called cost to serve a lot of software companies.

What, what is the cost to actually serve to our customers, uh, you know, these services, this, this software. Uh, so that's a key metric that's tracked. A few years ago, we decided to emulate that and create a carbon to serve metric side by side with this key cost metric, also understanding the carbon efficiency of our, um, of our product.

Uh, and so since establishing that metric three years ago, we established the metric as well as a goal to reduce it 10% annually. Uh, and since then, we've, we've exceeded that goal and have reduced it by 26%. So we are looking at our, you know, at our carb, the carbon efficiency of our software, um, uh, and kind of tracking it.

And, and so far we're hitting our goals and we, you know, we expect to continue to do so with this great innovation. For those who are watching on techstrong tv, they may be excited about hearing about this green code. What would you recommend is the best way for them to start incorporating practices like these into their own software development processes?

Yeah, definitely. Um, I would, I would take a look at the guide as, you know, as, as one set of, of, you know, collections of best practices. Uh, but there's a, there's a lot of others out there, you know, uh, a w s has a collection of, um, they put out a well architected guide that's more around, much more geared for to architects, but they have a sustainability pillar within that.

That's a really good resource. And then, as I mentioned, the Green Software Foundation has a lot of resources. Um, they have a collection of what they call awesome green software examples with, you know, the GI GitHub links that you can really dig into, uh, see how folks have done it and hopefully emulate it yourself.

That's a good point. We're gonna have the Green Software Foundation on techstrong TV very soon, uh, for that reason. Uh, so thank you for those resources.

Uh, Boris Gama Raikov, the head of Emissions Reduction Program at Salesforce. It was a pleasure speaking with you, Boris. You as well.

Thanks for having me. Great. Well stay with us on Techstrong tv.

We're going to have a lot more on sustainability and tech coming up after this.