A year ago, VMware’s CTO @RayOFarrell announced a public commitment to Sustainability for the first time through an inaugural VMware Global Impact Report. This commitment included the Office of the CTO driving Sustainability strategy for the company. This approach reflects not only VMware’s unique thinking about Global Impact but also a progressive view of Sustainability as a technology-led strategy.
We just released the Annual Update to the Global Impact Report highlighting progress toward our VMware 2020 goals and aspirations to positively affect the environment, society and global economy. Reporting annually allows us to reflect on our progress and meet our commitment to transparency and accountability across three pillars of impact: products, planet and people.
Global Impact Report Highlights:
Product Impact:
At VMworld a year ago, CEO Pat Gelsinger announced the findings of an independent study from IDC that quantified the collective net positive impact of VMware virtualization technology. Just last week, COO Sanjay Poonen highlighted this incredible legacy in an interview with CNBC. The positive impact of our software is exponential, and this year, the OCTO team has worked to extend the product impact model to include NSX and VSAN. This year at VMworld Barcelona, we announced the latest IDC study and I invite you to check it out.
As of 2016, VMware customers had avoided 415 Million Metric Tons of CO2e from entering the atmosphere – equivalent to powering nearly 50% of US households for one year. Furthermore, IDC estimates that the cumulative infrastructure avoidance–related savings can quickly exceed 20-25% when firms proportionately complement their vSphere installations with vSAN and NSX. In the big picture, this enables companies to aggressively pursue green IT (i.e., do their part in reducing their data center carbon footprint).
It’s hard to choose just one customer story to highlight in the annual report, but this year, the Siemens and Deutsche Bahn projects were among our favorites. We are continuously looking for great customer stories to highlight, so if you have a good story about how VMware solutions have helped to meet sustainability challenges and goals, please share it with the Sustainability team.
Planet Impact:
Over the last year VMware has continued to step up; joining the most progressive companies around the world in committing to a science-based target for our global carbon emissions reduction AND to 100% renewable energy for our global operations by 2020. I am very proud of the progress we’re making — we’re already at 100% renewable for our US and EMEA operations and at 72% renewable for our global portfolio. Moreover, as our CEO Pat Gelsinger publicly communicated earlier this year, VMware continues to lead and double-down on our commitment to Climate Change and the Paris Agreement.
People Impact:
VMware has continued to take bold steps in our Diversity and Inclusion journey by releasing our data and completing a global pay equity analysis. VMware’s global workforce is now at 23% women, and 42% are U.S. minorities. On top of that, our most recent third-party data analysis shows that at VMware, women earn 99% of their male counterparts’ salary globally and racial and ethnic minority employees earn 100% of their white counterparts in the U.S. We are proud of these results and are strongly committed to pay equity and equal opportunity across gender and racial lines.
Looking Forward to 2020
I hope you will be as inspired as I am with the progress we’ve made. Together, we are an unstoppable force for good, and a lot of our momentum comes from the work that we do every day with our employees, partners and customers. If you’re interested in reading even more, I invite you to explore the full report.
If you’d like to learn more about Nicola and her work, follow her on Twitter or visit VMware’s Sustainability Page.
