First tell us about VMware and what your organization expects to achieve from the association with GSF.
VMware is the essential software element that powers most mission critical business systems today. The software that runs the world runs on VMware compute, cloud, mobility, networking and security offerings. We believe that software has the power to unlock new opportunities for people and our planet. We deeply value sustainability and it is an important tenet of our ESG 2030 Agenda.
We joined the GSF because we seek to both inspire and implement the next generation of sustainable digital infrastructure. We want to be a part of creating tools and processes to facilitate greener, more sustainable software engineering.
Tell us about you and your team’s interests and VMware’s journey to GSF.
I myself am a research scientist (Distributed Edge, OCTO) who focuses on sustainable computing. But it's hard to talk about this work from an individual perspective because VMware’s efforts in green software really are a team effort. Our journey to the GSF wouldn’t have been possible without Zhelong Pan (Senior Architect, Sustainable Software Solutions), Andrew Woosnam (Software Engineer, Modern Applications Platform), Jeremy Wilken (Clarity Design System Manager, Design Platform), Nicola Peill-Moelter (Director of Sustainability Innovation) and Shalini Singh (Senior Manager, Sustainability Operations).
Some of us have ‘sustainability’ in our job titles, but for all of us, our interest comes from a passion for doing what is right, willingness to tackle hard problems, and a belief that doing good for the planet aligns strongly with doing good for our customers.
How do you view working with the GSF and in green software in general?
Sustainability and green software are big problems that no one company can solve, so we need this space where lots of contributors can get together and exchange ideas on really hard problems. I really value the community of engineers who care deeply about sustainability. It is an enormous opportunity to learn from people who have expertise in all sorts of areas, all of us working together towards a common goal.
What obstacles do you see to wider use of green software? How do you think we can overcome them?
I see the biggest obstacles as culture and tools. Only recently have we started talking about the energy aspects of software. Far more often we hear about other metrics like computational or space complexity. We teach those concepts in CS classes, we ask about them in job interviews. So naturally software engineers infer that these matter most.
We need to change what we’re talking about, have more conversations about things like energy and sustainability related metrics. I think the cultural challenge plays a big part in the second obstacle: lack of tools.
Right now, we have a lot of tools to help us analyze memory usage, code duplication, concurrency, and so on. We have very few to help us analyze energy consumption and carbon intensity. Without tools to help them, even the most enthusiastic software engineer will have trouble actually implementing greener software at scale.
What other matters would you like to share with our readers?
Your readers may want to check out these links to VMware’s relevant work in the sustainability space:
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