As a global IT supplier seeking to make the society more sustainable, T-Systems bears a great responsibility. And the demand from our customers is very high too. They face numerous challenges in each of their sectors. At the same time, regulatory authorities across the globe are focusing on companies’ environmental performance. This means that sustainability strategies meeting the needs of authorities, customers, and investors will soon become important for all businesses. And the use of green IT services and products will become the new normal.
As such, T-Systems has unconditionally committed itself to the ambitious climate objectives of Deutsche Telekom, making its own contribution with a special program. Among other things, T-Systems is converting its entire fleet of business vehicles worldwide to electric cars from this year on. This alone will reduce our CO2 emissions by around 1,000 tons per year. Not only do we want to be carbon-neutral by 2025 (Scope 1 & 2), but we also plan to extend this climate neutrality to the entire value chain by 2040 (Scope 3). And thus, we would like our suppliers to achieve green zero in the production and use of our products. After all, ICT and digitalization are two of the key factors for businesses to reduce their emissions - but this starts with the efficiency of our very own T-Systems data centers.
For this reason, in 2021 we joined the climate neutrality pact for data centers, an agreement between data-center operators and trade associations who have committed to the European Green Deal, which is perhaps the most ambitious agenda the EU has ever set. We are, therefore, taking a further step by committing to green technology and climate neutrality.
Our series of articles in this issue of our customer magazine Future Practice shows just how we are helping our customers with their climate neutrality ambitions – across a wide range of industries. The global retail sector on the cusp of the metaverse is just one example of this. Others include our global mobility, which continues to connect us through individual transport (think cars), as well as farms, which, in light of climate change, need to prevent bad harvests with increasing urgency.
We therefore know, for example, that on-premises SAP systems are not only cost-, time-, and resource-intensive, but also generally responsible for higher carbon emissions. They are often designed for a peak load with capacity resources, which are rarely ever used. The example of one of our collaborations with Google shows what’s happening instead – and how the SAP Data Migration Factory from T-Systems is opening the doors to a sovereign cloud at the same time.
However, zero-emission cloud services are just one of the objectives that we can achieve faster together – of that, I’m sure. Provided you speak the same language. The example of consistent data exchange from Catena-X, the international network for the automotive value creation chain, shows how Bosch and T-Systems are collaborating in this regard. With the #GreenMagenta label, we are continuously working on the certification of further products and IT services that help to reduce CO2. We currently have more than 14 of these in the business customer segment alone.
Plus, the example of a project by Leipzig University and Obstland AG in Saxony, which uses TSystems’ Innovation Center, shows how the cloud, IoT, blockchain, sensors, and, at the end of the day, big data analytics, help make it possible to produce millions of tons of fruit and vegetables in a more reliable way and thereby make farm crop yields more reliable across the globe. As always, before we go big, we’re starting small – and in this case, specifically with a single apple tree.
Sincerely,
Adel Al-Saleh
