The Biggest Challenge for Sustainability is Measurement. | Chris Lloyd-Jones, Avanade @ State of Open Con 2023

Published on
09/02/2023 09:07 AM
Link to video on Youtube

The State of Open Con 2023 has just kicked off in London and the EM360 team was there to interview business leaders and industry experts about everything open source. 

Yesterday, we spoke to Chris Lloyd-Jones, Head of Open Technologies for Avanade, about the latest trends and biggest challenges for the open-source industry and the future of open-source software within the enterprise landscape. 

Open data critical to calculating environmental impacts 

When asked about the importance of Open Data for sustainability efforts, Mr Lloyd-Jones explained that collaborative, open data is the only way to mitigate the impact of an organisation's carbon footprint.  

“When you're working with any kind of technology, there are tonnes of stakeholders involved. So you've got the Cloud Data Centre providers, you've got the software that you're using, and you've got your hardware:

“If we're not collaborating, sharing data openly and calculating environmental impacts in the same way, we won't get one number and it'll be really hard to actually mitigate the impact we're having upon the environment,” Mr Lloyd-Jones explained. 

Organisations need a standard for measuring carbon emissions 

When asked about some of the biggest challenges organisations are facing in terms of sustainability, Mr Lloyd-Jones explained that many are not following any standard in their calculations, leading to inaccuracies across the enterprise landscape. 

“If I'm on a particular cloud provider, how do I know what their environmental impact is? How do I compare apples with apples, like with like? Because the data is hidden.”

“One of the things we're doing with the foundation is creating a software carbon intensity standard.”

“The Green Software Foundation is powering that and Avanard is supporting to make sure we're all measuring and calculating environmental impact the same way,” Mr Lloyd Jones explained.

To read more about sustainability, visit our Business Agility page