So, as Paul mentioned, we're going to have a quick Q&A session. I hope some of you are able to hear Simon and others in the tech jam on sustainability. My name is Spencer Cells. My day job is I'm in the office of the CTO in our cloud operations business unit working for Yonci Stephenson. Um, my passion though as well is improving our sustainability efforts. And so, thanks to Paul in the back of the room and Matt Watts, learned a lot more about what we can do. Uh, and so that was about 16 months ago. and since then started causing trouble trying to improve what NetApp does from a product uh go to market and other capabilities. So it's my pleasure to have a chance to interview Simon and ask him some questions. You will have the opportunities as well but Simon let's start with who you are and tell us more about Astroenica. >> Sure. So Simon Close um from the UK u work in the northwest of England hence the accent. Hopefully you can follow my accent. Um yes, so Astroenica is a global pharmaceutical company. Hopefully many of you heard of Astroenica. Um I think we're about 80,000 employees and I look after the uh three teams really. I have a hybrid engineering team that looks after everything to do with on-rem storage and compute. I have a cloud native engineering team that looks after all of our Kubernetes clusters that we run globally uh both on prem and the public cloud. And then I also have accountability for the Astroenica data centers globally as well. Um so we have a number of data centers all over the world uh that we look after combination of colo facilities with the likes of Equinex Singel in Singapore, Kindrill in Japan, SDS in Shanghai um and then some Astroenica facility based data centers as well. >> It's going to keep you pretty busy. >> Yeah. on your team >> around about 35 in my direct team and then about the same again in terms of third parties like resident engineers from NetApp um Convolt and then Hansen's team as well that support the data centers and then when I'm not busy with that I'm pushing IT sustainability and thank you for doing that um Astroenica I know as a organization has made some very strong commitments around decarbonization and sustainability Maybe you can share those with the audience here.>> Yeah. So, we have um something that we call ambition zero carbon which is kind of our overarching program of um sustainable uh activities. Um and there's a number of pillars in there including access to health care, um ethics and transparency and then environmental protection of which obviously the sustainability and the carbon emissions isa key one. Um and we've got a number of kind of public publicly stated goals and aims in terms of what we want to achieve in terms of carbon reduction and by when. We're fully committed in terms of the science-based targets initiative. Uh so we've got full commitment there and all the targets have been verified by that organization. Um so we're very much publicly stating what we're going to achieve in terms of being net zero by 2045.um and how we're going to get there. Uh so I think we're targeting round about 95%reduction in scopes one and two emissions by 2026 and 50% reduction in scope 3 by 2030. Um on the way to being net zero by 2045 >> and so that 2045 is for scopes 1 2 and three all three. Yeah. So forAstroenica what does scope three look like for NetApp? Scope 3 is you using our systems or at least a part of that. But for you, what is that? >> It's complex because obviously we've got a complex supply chain, you know, of organizations that are supplying us with materials that go into the drug manufacturing process. We've got our cloud providers that form part of the scope 3 and that's a difficult area in terms of the transparency of um of their carbon emissions. So we're working hard and pushing those cloud providers hard to help us understand what our scope 3 missions are. Um but it as a whole in terms of our power usage is round about 1 to 2% of Astroenica's total power usage.>> So it is quite a small proportion of the overall power usage. However, that doesn't mean we can ignore it. So all the things that we're doing in terms of best practice is still the right thing to do. But what we're doing now with the business is looking to see how it can enable the business to reduce that 98% that we've got no immediate control over.>> Okay. >> Okay. >> Okay. >> But how we can help them reduce their waste, reduce the power usage, etc. >> And was it difficult to get um your sustainability initiatives and it started or supported or did that come down as a mandate? >> No, itcame down as a mandate. So when it's mandated, it's always easy to uh get things moving. So there's a number of so since the um you know I mentioned in the talk this morning that the SBTI is really the north star that we're aiming for. >> So we're all fixated and focused on that and then there's a number of work streams across the organization looking at how they can help from a sustainability p perspective. Um and specifically IT have taken that on to see what it can do. So obviously I'm driving hard in terms of power usage in our data centers to reduce that. um driving hard the um adoption of the solution blueprints and the scoring of them from a sustainability p uh perspective. So it's not terribly hard. In fact, everybody's got an objective as well over sustainability. So every employee is kind of targeted and measured around their awareness of what Astroenica are doing from a sustainability perspective and how we're publicizing that and how we're actively working to um make it known and well understood andmake everyone aware of what their contribution can be to reduce>> carbon emissions globally. >> Maybe we'll get there someday. But um you mentioned SBTI. Can you explain a little bit about what that is and why it's so important for you and ASP? >> Yeah, so it'san independent organization really that um validates any commitments that you make in terms of reduction of your scoped emissions. So how are you going to actually achieve that? um you know do you have firm measurements in terms of what they those emissions currently are where they are um and then by what metric are you going to reduce them bywhat percentage by what year what target year etc. So you make all these commitments and document how you're actually going to achieve those reductions they get independently verified then by the SBTI they'll publish them as verified targets on their website that everybody can see. So there's thousands of organizations worldwide that are contributing to these SBTI at different states of um kind of acceptance really but our targets have been verified. So we're on there astargets being set and stated and therefore that's why we're tracking against them. Um and again I mentioned in this morning's talk around we're working hard with our procurement team to ensure that all of our suppliers that we're working with are also signing up to SPTI. Um, so we've got again a target of 75% by spend of our suppliers have to be signed up to SBTI by the end of 2023 and that has to be 95% by the end of 2026. >> Okay. >> Okay. >> Okay. >> So that's by spend. So that's a huge amount. Yeah. So that's hundreds of millions, you know, sorry, billions of dollars um that we're spending with third parties and we're encouraging them to actively be part of that. So in time, what will happen is that if those partners aren't endorsed and verified by SBTI, then we won't use them. So if there's a choice of two suppliers, one's on SBTI and one isn't, we simply not use them.>> That's um a pretty strong statement to your supply chain. >> Just in case you're wondering, we NetApp do adhere to SPTI. Uh the latest submissions were in we submitted in April or May and there's a backlog so we haven't heard back yet but it may have come in this week but um and we believe in that same philosophy of transparency and um not making a commitment that you don't have to live to but something that is measurable. >> You had some um a great slack line I think it was called or tagline >> strap line >> tagline in the US strap line in Yorkshire. Yeah. Yorkshire. Yeah. Yorkshire. Yeah. >> Yeah. So tellthe audience about that because I thought it was very uh very helpful. >> Yeah. So it's and the reason really why I kind of drafted it is because it's fairly simple but there's a lot that you can do to unpack it. So could probably spend hours unpacking each statement in there. But essentially the strap line or tagline if you like is to run business value workloads on optimized infrastructure in the lowest carbon intense location only for the duration of need. So if you look at each of those elements you can unpack each of those. So lowest carbon intense location you know where is that worker load running is it on optimized infra infrastructure so is it you know the right size is it optimized you know all of those things and is it adding business value because we have lots of great ideas have how it can solve a problem but is it really needed to solve that problem? You know, we had one solution once that was to deliver um electronic lockers in a um manufacturing site and it needed some servers and some electronic locks and all these kind of complications. And really when we thought about it, we thought, well, what's the point of that? You know, why? And I know why they wanted it because people were all forever losing the keys and getting them, you know, cut open or unlocked, but everybody's used to kind of the safes in the hotel rooms with the fourdigit, you know, pin code, etc. So, why not just have a mechanical pin code that people can use? There's no keys. There's no IT solution involved >> andit's, you know, it solves the business problem without incurring >> Yeah. No, without the server, the network, the storage and all that. So you have to challenge things early on and make sure that people are doing things for the right reasons rather than just saying there's a technology solution for this. Well, there is, but is it needed? Because obviously the most sustainable solution is the solution you don't need. Andfor those of you in the audience who are getting started with sustainability initiatives in their organizations or who want to get started, what would you recommend to them? How did you get started and what did you learn from that? >> Well, I got started when I really westarted benchmarking the power usage in our data centers in 2021. So, what is our power usage? Where are those data centers located? What's the PUE associated with those data centers? And what's then the ultimate carbon emissions associated with them? And we all know that we have to refresh it every so often. So sometimes there's an element of dual running. So sometimes the power costs go up and the emissions go up, but ultimately through consolidation and decommissioning um and optimization, we should be seeing thatum power usage come down. Um and again, I mentioned this morning, it's about keeping the model simple because if you over complicate things, you know, everybody could have complex spreadsheets and PowerBI dashboards and all of those things, but what is it that you're trying to achieve and how can you simply get there? How can you confidently stand behind the metrics that you've got and show that you're making progress? So, we're targeted and my boss's boss is targeted in fact in his annual goals and objectives to demonstrate that we're reducing our power usage by 10% at least year. So, again, from that 2021 baseline, we're proving that I think we achieved 13% um annually so far. So, we've got a 10% power reduction this year with a 15% stretch goal. Um and we're about on target to achieve between 10 and 15% power reduction. >> So start with measuring where you are. Set some a um simple keep it simple in order to make the improvements. Uh set some goals thatyou can attain but are meaningful. I think you shared with me um little old school way of tracking your measurements is good oldfashioned Excel I think. So uh we um we have plenty of telemetry data but um sometimes you know just dumping in Excel and doing Tableau and or other calculations may be the best way to move forward on that. Now as you look at cloud we youwere sharing yesterday there's some um opportunities and some challenges and working with some of our partners here who are maybe within earshot AWS and Google and Azure. Can you um help the audience better understand some of your thought processes in terms of sustainability and where to use the cloud, which cloud or what to put in the cloud?>> Yeah. So, I think I don't necessarily agree that moving to the cloud is more sustainable than onrem. Um you know, you I could debate that probably fordays or hours. Um blanket statements like that just don't wash really. Um it depends on if you're just doing a lift and shift or if you're optimizing the point of move etc and lots of other kind of variables that are in there but the key factor for me isthe location of that region. So which public cloud region are you going with and where is it? So our EMIA default region you well used to be in Dublin um which isn't a very sustainable region either um from a power usage point of view. We've now um established EU North one with AWS in Sweden in Stockholm as our default region for AMIA which is hugely sustainable you know low carbon grid emissions compared to anywhere else in the world. Um thankfully that's where our on-prem data centers are as well in the main um so we're already benefiting it from that. Um so choosing which cloud is less important than choosing where that cloud is. So always look at the um grid emissions associated with the country or the state as it is in the US where that um data center is or where that uh cloud region is or availability zone and make sure that you choose wisely based on that. Um so we use locationbased um grid emissions as a key kind of metric or barometer to where to place them. So they're publicly available and you can see that areas like North Virginia are not very um carbon um efficient. You know the grid intensity is ex exceptionally high. You look at thedata there and the power is pretty much generated 80 or 90% from fossil fuel. Um whereas Sweden is pretty much 100% green power from hydro etc. So there's lots of benefits ofchoosing the right um cloud region. So I wouldn't accept that moving to a cloud is a more greenable greener and sustainable solution. It's not. You need to choose wisely. Choose the location and look at the location based emissions and choose based on that. Not just choose based on somebody says, "Oh, don't worry cuz we're 100% renewable energy." Well, yeah, but is that through green power direct from the grid? Is it through renewable energy certificates and wrecks and regos and go and all those things? You know, what is it that you um using to come out with those public statements and watch out for that because there is an element of greenwashing in that type of approach that you need to avoid really. So do your homework, but look at the publicly available stats in terms of those grid emissions. Choose wisely based onthe carbon intensity locations. Um, and yeah, by all means, move to the cloud, but choose where you want to wisely. >> Choose, we talked about CA Central 1 inone in Canada. Yeah. >> You know, that's pretty much 100% um green power as well from hydro. So, you know, you couldn't choose better thanum than Canada if you wanted that kind of low grid intensity. But >> so you're doing workload placement decisions based upon the percentage of renewable energy in that cloud region. >> Yeah, that's right. We've got a huge $1 billion S4 Hannah program at the moment and that's part of the reason why we've now just brought on Stockholm for as EU North one and the S4 Hannah environment is going to go straight into Stockholm rather than into Dublin. >> Wonderful.And then um how are we doing? How is NetUP technology or software helping you either measure or achieve your goals? >> I think it's coming along. Um I think there there's still a way to go but I think things in um RUXP you know the sustainability dashboard that's in there now is helping with some of that to see what the actual power usage is and the gr and the carbon emissions associated with the netup environments. Um, it I would like to see it more integrated into some of the feeds that we can provide like the smart PDUs in the data centers in terms of what the power usage is to feed those into things like cloud insights andstart to really pull that holistic view together. Um, because yes, we've got our spreadsheet, you've got your dashboard, other people have got PowerBI, etc. So there's lots of disperate places where this information is presented and really to pull it together into a single holistic central location will be really beneficial. Um secondly I think you know we're I mentioned theStockholm region. So when we move our production Kubernetes clusters into Stockholm we're going to try and establish them all on ARMbased um CPUs. So again at the moment they're all on Intel in Dublin. We're going to establish them on ARMbased CPUs in uh in Stockholm to you know to start to realize that you know 60% I think that's quite conservative reduction inpower foruse of ARMbased chipsets is probably much higher than 60%. I think that's quite conservative. So I'd like to see more adoption of ARMbased technologies or lower powered CPU type devices in NetApp solutions so that we can benefit you know directly from that without really having to ask and challengeit. DidRichard make you say that or did he >> Yeah, he said make sure it's recorded and then uhwell you can commit to it then we can uh we can make some progress. This is recorded and you were sharing yesterday some of the um use of storage grid and the uh taring of the archive data and thesustainability and cost calculations that you were making in those decisions. >> Yeah. So we have I think around about 120 pabytes of NetApp storage um currently in the organization. 50 pabytes of that is storage grid. Um we've got eight grids globally um running that 50 pabytes and what we've seen is thatthrough enabling fabric pool we're tearing data out to the storage grid but when we came to look at the power um consumption of storage grid compared to the AFFS obviously storage grid I say obviously the storage grid is more power intensive than the AFFS just due to the type of technology I guess. So what we did is we looked at that and said well actually it's not a bad news story because through using fabric pool and ne and doing the data taring of those terabytes out to storage grid what we've done is we've avoided the net new purchase you know much to our sales people's distress but we've avoided the new purchase of storage from NetApp andnegated that need. So if you look at the fact that we don't need to buy additional capacity because we've got storage grid then actually in the U modeling that we did wekind of worked out that the emissions were kind of equivalent between storing something on storage grid and storing something on the AFF through negating the need to buy new storage that would consume more power etcSo that's what we did in terms of that modeling. Uh, so we're actually getting the hook here from Paul, but um, if I can impose, >> you don't like to use that term, but yeah.Uh, Simon, maybe if we could just stand on the side if you have any questions. Um, Simon, thank you for being a customer. Thank you for um pushing us to do more and for this transparency. I don't see Ross, but I hear some RFS coming in for our sustainability dashboard. uh and I appreciate yourinsights and um I hope those of you in the audience you'll take this as an opportunity to challenge yourselves uh and figure out how you can work on your sustainability journey. So let's give an applause for Simon. Thank you.