Your host Thomas Maurer and guest Tobias Zimmergren will discuss the sustainability guidance recently released in the Cloud Adoption Framework. Sustainability guidance has been published in several of the methodologies, given that sustainability as a topic touches all aspects of a customer’s cloud adoption. The following methodologies have sustainability considerations:   Strategy Plan Govern Manage Tobias will talk about why Microsoft released the guidance and how the Cloud Adoption Framework guidance differs from the . He will also share some details on what's included in this guidanc ..read more

Last month, I presented at Women in Tech Global Conference on the topic. During the conference and afterwards, I received a lot of queries on:   Do I as a Technologist have a role to play in ‘Sustainability’? What is Technology’s role in Sustainability? How is Technology getting influenced by ‘Sustainability’? In this blog, I am answering these frequently asked questions.   We often relate to Sustainability as an initiative or agenda through which carbon footprint of any product is shared and some organizations share their commitment to reduce the same.   Here is the high-leve ..read more

In my last blog post Make Sustainability Part of Everybody's Job (microsoft.com) I argued that sustainability teams would never have enough resources to drive change across the entirety of their organizations, and I provided practical tips for how to democratize sustainability work across all employees, roles, and job functions. In this article, I’ll explore one of the most effective ways to do that: employee sustainability communities. Companies who embrace and support these communities can grow the sustainability fluency of their existing workforce, attract and retain top talent, u ..read more

About #EarthDay Did you know that April 22 is Earth Day?  In 2020, over 100 million people worldwide celebrated the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, driving awareness and actionable learning around environmental issues with activities focused on education, conservation, citizen science, cleanup and more.   In 2021, the #EarthDay theme is Restore Our Earth with a focus on five topics: The Canopy Project - a conservation and restoration effort to plant trees and rehabilitate areas ..read more

  I am a Sustainability activist at work. And that’s OK. Hello there, Jessica here, I am a marketing leader at Microsoft. This article is to share with you how I am working on making sustainability everybody's job at Microsoft, as I reflect on my own journey working with a group of smart and agile leaders of the Worldwide Sustainability Community at Microsoft. I believe it is everyone's responsibility to help their corporations become more responsible and sustainable. If you are interested in helping your organization step up its environmental game, this article will help you get started ..read more

On October 24 we released new technical guidance to help customers and partners achieve their sustainability goals using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) – guidance to help you improve efficiency of your AKS workloads and create new business value while reducing your operational footprint.   Sustainability guidance for AKS As part of Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to promote sustainable development and low-carbon business practices globally, we’ve released sustainability guidance within the Azure Well-Architected Framework (WAF) designed to help you optimize your Azure workloads for greener ..read more

On October 12 we’re announcing new technical guidance to help customers and partners achieve their sustainability goals using Azure – guidance to help you to plan your path forward, improve your sustainability posture, and create new business value while reducing your operational footprint. Get started today at https://aka.ms/waf/sustainability/docs.   This initial release focused on workload optimizations for green IT within the Azure Well-Architected Framework (WAF) is part of a broader initiative to help customers navigate the steep learning curve around how to meet and plan for e ..read more

There is change brewing in the air, quite literally. For the first time in human history, the Keeling Curve, which measures atmospheric carbon dioxide, reached 420 parts per million (ppm). This unfortunate news, combined with the undeniable increase in severe weather events and ongoing IPCC warnings, has led to a metaphorical change in the air. As a result, many stakeholders, from front-line workers to knowledge workers to the board and customers, are discussing sustainability. One of the critical tenants of lowering your company's carbon impact is operational reductions. This means ..read more

What IoT is to the Metaverse   To echo the sentiment of a recent article in Wired Magazine, the metaverse is less about any specific type of technology, and much more about how we interact with technology. To appreciate just how compelling a departure this is, consider Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s take:   … the metaverse enables us to embed computing into the real world and to embed the real world into computing, bringing real presence to any digital space. Techgig.com; Jan 2022   Thus, the promise of the metaverse is a net-new ‘phygital’ experience – one draws strategically u ..read more

This article is the second part of a two-part series looking at technology's unique intersection with ESG. In the first part, we looked at technology solving ESG challenges; this blog examines technology as an ESG risk.   Today, the cloud has democratized access to capabilities that digitize and network almost all aspects of a business and its operations. Solving core business issues with technology is Digital Transformation in action. For example, a modern manufacturer might gain tighter quality control through a visual AI tool that inspects parts for consistency while networked robots b ..read more