VMware Teams With Microsoft, IBM, Equinix To Tackle Climate Change

‘Through this program, we will help drive VMware Cloud Partner data centers powered by 100 percent renewable energy sources by 2030,’ says VMware’s channel chief, Sandy Hogan.

VMware is striving to reduce the massive carbon footprint created by data centers by launching a new program today with the goal of making VMware’s cloud partners’ data centers be powered by 100 percent renewable energy by 2030.

Market-leading data center and cloud providers including Equinix, IBM and Microsoft are joining VMware’s initiative to battle climate change and the huge carbon emissions caused by powering data centers across the globe.

“Through this program, we will help drive VMware Cloud Partner data centers powered by 100 percent renewable energy sources by 2030. This initiative extends our reach and impact alongside our cloud partners,” said VMware’s global channel chief Sandy Hogan in an email to CRN. “It enables us to connect customers who have sustainability goals and are looking for low-carbon solutions with a VMware cloud provider who is committed to achieving zero carbon clouds through renewable energy-powered operations and energy-efficient data centers.”

[Related: Dell Technologies World 2021: 6 Biggest Product Launches]

The VMware Zero Carbon Committed cloud partner initiative will accelerate the transition to zero carbon clouds through VMware Cloud Partner data centers. These verified VMware cloud partners aim to operate infrastructure, energy and carbon-efficient data centers based on VMware software defined data center technologies and have commitments to using renewable energy power.

Microsoft said it has committed to be carbon negative by 2030.

“Sustainability is front and center for our datacenter growth and operations,” said Microsoft’s Noelle Walsh, CVP of Cloud Operations + Innovation, in a statement. “We’ve made early progress and as part of this journey, we are proud to work with other forward-thinking partners like VMware and their Zero Carbon Committed Initiative to help drive change across the industry.”

Equinix is one of the largest data center providers and operators in the world with more than 220 data centers across five continents and an ecosystem of more than 10,000 companies. Equinix’s Steve Steinhilber said his company and VMware have been partnering for years to help enterprises with their digital transformations and now will collaborate “to doing our part to protect the planet.”

“Through this partnership with VMware, we can help our mutual customers and partners green their supply chain and reduce their environmental impact while building fast and more secure enterprise hybrid multicloud infrastructures,” said Steinhilber, vice president of business development at Equinix, in a statement.

Overall, VMware’s Zero Carbon Committed program will focus on three main initiatives: catalyze the transition to a zero-carbon Internet through VMware’s public cloud providers partnerships; help customers reach sustainability and decarbonization goals by connecting them with cloud providers that have aligned goals; and accelerate sustainable computing with VMware’s cloud infrastructure technology.

Other vendors that joined VMware’s initiative include Atea, OVHcloud and OVHcloud US.

“The challenge of achieving net zero carbon emissions will require us to come together as a global community to collaborate toward a sustainable future,” said Hogan, senior vice president of VMware’s worldwide partner and commercial organization.

Over time, VMware plans to raise awareness among other cloud providers about the importance to customers of sustainable cloud operations. In the long term, VMware hopes to develop programs to assist providers with launching renewable energy initiatives.

Ethnic minority students less likely to win university places

Black, Asian and other ethnic minority students face a persistent gap in winning university undergraduate offers in England compared with white applicants, even when exam performance is taken into account.

Data published by the admissions service Ucas show that even after adjusting for A-level scores, ethnic minority students are marginally less likely to be given offers of places, while white students with similar predicted grades at A level are more successful at getting offers.

Publication of the figures, comparing applications rates and offers at English universities by ethnic groups between 2010 and 2014, follows calls for greater transparency by the universities minister Jo Johnson.

The analysis suggested that while the gap in successful applications by ethnic minorities is more narrow than previous measures, a small but stubborn gap in success rates remains.

Mary Curnock Cook, Ucas’s chief executive, said: “This analysis is encouraging in that it does not reflect any systemic bias against ethnic minorities in higher education admissions.”

Analysis by the Guardian of the Ucas data showed that the gap in the numbers of ethnic minority students actually offered places widens as universities get less selective – meaning that leading universities such as Manchester and Birmingham appear more receptive to ethnic minority applicants than those outside the Russell Group.

The Ucas analysis used forecasts of the proportion of places that ethnic minority and white applicants would be predicted to win on different courses based solely on their A-level predictions – using data from five years of applications to universities by 18-year-olds living in England.

It then compared the forecast to the real number of students from white or ethnic minority backgrounds who were offered places between 2010 and 2014 – and revealed that ethnic minority students under-shot their forecasted levels in 10 out of 14 subject areas in applications to highly selective universities such as UCL.

The gap in expected and actual offers was most marked in European languages and literature, medical sciences such as pharmacology, engineering and biological sciences, with a 1%-2% gap between Ucas’s forecasts and the final offers made by universities.

In the case of medical sciences, the figures suggest more than 360 ethnic minority students were turned down for places that the Ucas forecast suggests they should have gained at leading Russell Group universities, over the five years of data.

“We are anxious to rule out the sort of large, systemic differences in applications and offers that have been discussed in the past,” said Mark Corver, Ucas’s director of analysis and research, saying that the remaining difference was nothing like the 10-20 percentage point gaps seen in overall offer rates.

The Ucas data showed that ethnic minorities applicants’ chances deteriorated slightly when applying to universities outside the top tier.

The analysis did not include data from Oxbridge or from medicine, dentistry or veterinary courses, which have different admissions processes.

Johnson, the universities minister, last week called for Ucas to provide more detailed data on admissions among different groups.

“This latest publication shows welcome progress and supports our commitment to increase the number of black and minority ethnic students by 20% in the next five years,” Johnson said.

“Providing more data like this will help the whole higher education sector to really focus its effort to widen participation and raise young people’s aspirations.”

Les Ebdon, the director of Office for Fair Access, welcomed the release of the data.

“We know that some ethnic groups are under-represented in higher education, and there continue to be gaps in attainment between groups of students of different ethnicities,” Ebdon said.