Ask a Distinguished Engineer:

How can IT be more sustainable?

Looking for ways to improve sustainability in
the workplace? Ask IT.

Your technology or IT department may have ideas to create a big impact with minimal effort or investment.

We asked our Distinguished Engineers for their advice on simple, yet meaningful ways to make sustainable technology choices.

What is a Distinguished Engineer?

An Insight Distinguished Engineer (DE) is an industry-recognized IT professional who’s earned the highest levels of thought leadership, mentorship and industry influence. DEs are highly tenured, well-respected and sought-after veterans of the industry. Their perspectives on key trends and evolving technologies give business leaders new ways to approach digital transformation.

Choose brands with strong ESG programs and offerings.

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) is increasingly important to business leaders. The desire to be good corporate citizens is obvious, but meeting regulatory requirements may be mandatory.

There are several ways organizations can improve their ESG performance. For example, they can use more efficient storage technologies to reduce their carbon footprint. They can also use software to monitor their environmental impact and report on their progress.

We’re always excited to help our clients on their ESG journey. By partnering with them directly, we provide them with the offerings they need, while ensuring our partner ecosystem lives and works with shared values.

We have strong partnerships with Cisco, Dell Technologies, HP, IBM, Lenovo and many others. These partners all have ESG programs, and we’re starting to see some amazing product offerings that we can implement to help our clients become more sustainable.

We’re always excited to help our clients on their ESG journey. By partnering with them directly, we provide them with the offerings they need, while ensuring our partner ecosystem lives and works with shared values.

Juan Orlandini,
Insight Distinguished Engineer

Juan Orlandini

The most senior of our Distinguished Engineers with more than 30 years as a technologist, Juan has demonstrated expertise in everything from networking and IT strategy to server architecture and much more. As chief architect, he’s seen this market evolve and transform, every step of the way as a client-obsessed thought leader and dedicated mentor.

Build sustainability into the device lifecycle.

When I think of sustainability in the modern workplace, I think of the device lifecycle approach. We work with many partners, such as Dell, to provide depot services and disposal services for devices. This includes getting devices back from customers and determining what to do with them. Can we send them to someone else? Can they be refurbished or recycled properly?

I also think about sustainability in terms of how we manage devices. We can drive sustainability by reducing power consumption and by encouraging users to use devices in a sustainable way.

Overall, we want to reduce the cost of ownership of devices. But more importantly, we want to reduce the environmental impact of devices.

Here are some specific examples of how we can make devices more sustainable:

By taking these steps, we can make a positive impact on the environment and help organizations save money.

Joseph (Joe) Flynn

Fueled by a passion for trending technology, Joe continues to build on his 25 years of industry experience. A trusted leader among clients and teammates and a go-to subject matter expert in our modern workplace area of expertise, Joe is an influential voice for redefining and proving the value of the modern workplace.

Reduce power consumption and emissions by increasing workload efficiency.

A lot of organizations run large workloads. They can improve their sustainability by understanding how efficiently their workloads are performing. This can be done by monitoring the environment and determining which applications and servers can be shut off at certain times to save money.

Another way to improve sustainability is to upgrade aging equipment and infrastructure with the latest chips and software. This can help to reduce power consumption and carbon emissions. It’s more expensive up-front, but pays off in the long run.

These are relatively easy steps that organizations can take to improve their sustainability.

Carmen (Carm) Taglienti

Carm brings more than 25 years of experience to the table with deep expertise in cloud computing, data science, data analytics, cybersecurity and organizational innovation. He is also skilled at building and driving Centers of Excellence, which he’s done for IBM Cloud and AWS Cloud.

A lot of organizations run large workloads. They can improve their sustainability by understanding how efficiently their workloads are performing.

Carmen Taglienti,
Insight Distinguished Engineer