Striving for sustainability amid the data effect in APAC

As digitization accelerates data growth, how do organizations stay sustainable, resilient, and keep innovating?

We know data is growing. But in APAC we’re seeing more data growth than anywhere else in the world. The numbers back it up. According to the Data Gravity Index 2.0¹, data volumes in APAC are expected to grow to 461k EB by 2025—towering over North America’s estimated 400k EB and EMEA’s 323k EB.

Behind this growth is the technological evolution we’re witnessing across China, India, Indonesia and beyond. China is an example of a country that’s moved from being primarily cash first, to now encouraging digital payments, with a mobile payment penetration rate of over 88%.² And it doesn’t matter if a sale is for a cup of coffee or a new car; the data created is the same.

And this sharp rise in data is having a huge impact on critical sustainability numbers.

Organizations are turning to increasingly power-hungry data center infrastructure solutions to cope with the volumes of data being produced. Especially when it comes to AI, which data and statistics suggest has carbon emissions on a par with the entire airline industry.³ But the growing pressure on businesses to focus on sustainability and drive down their carbon output comes at a direct conflict with this rise in data. 

Is the answer in the stars...? Well, yes.

At Hitachi Vantara, we’re looking at every aspect of what we do and the environment, reducing power consumption at every turn to support our customers in meeting sustainability targets. As part of our long-term commitment to sustainability and innovation in the data storage industry, we’re reducing carbon emissions by up to 40% with every new VSP model launch—without compromising performance.

This is reflected in our recent ENERGY STAR^® ratings in an evaluation by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with Hitachi Vantara VSP solutions coming in first, second, third, fifth and seventh for energy-efficient data storage solutions. The results were astounding. Our top performing VSP One Block 28 solution won by far, at 535 IOPS/W.  (IOPS refers to “input/output operations per second”—a standard unit of measure for the maximum number of reads/writes for a storage array).

Coming second and third were the VSP One Block 26 and VSP E1090 at 411 and 368.86. Then came the VSP E790 (fifth place) at 274.17 and the VSP One Block 24 (seventh place) at 216.7.⁴

With these numbers, we’re passing on huge environmental benefits directly to our customers, helping them to lower the energy consumption of their data centers. We’re not stopping here; we’re continually pushing our innovation team and continually pushing the materials we use to keep making sure that everything we do has sustainability at its core.

Always room for improvement

As organizations look at their data storage architectures and seek out opportunities to boost sustainability, it’s also an opportunity to look at other critical areas of the infrastructure, such as backup and recovery. The risk of ransomware driven by AI is growing, so it’s crucial not to become complacent about business continuity. It’s an area that should be under regular review.  

Innovation drives growth and opportunity, but only if the impact of that innovation is monitored and modernization doesn’t happen in isolation. It’s the small iterative steps now, that future-proof business tomorrow.

Want to discover more about what makes your data the key to unlocking sustainability across your business?Watch this new webinar on how you can actively choose data platforms that enable you to manage your data efficiently and sustainably.

SOURCES

¹ https://www.digitalrealty.co.uk/resources/reports/data-gravity-index

² https://www.statista.com/statistics/1243879/china-mobile-payment-penetration-rate/

³ https://www.carma.earth/blog-posts/the-carbon-footprint-of-ai

⁴ https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/blog/going-for-sustainability-gold-again-with-data-storage-energy-star-finish