Climate change is a critical element when it comes to companies establishing their environmental, social and governance goals, and a recently released report from Pure Storage Inc. spoke to exactly that.

The company shared interesting metrics from that study, which involved a thousand sustainability leaders around the globe. The report found that leaders universally focused on global sustainability as a top priority. It also found that such concerns directly influenced companies’ buying decisions, particularly regarding infrastructure.

TheCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, dove into the big questions surrounding IT sustainability during the “Pure Storage: The Path to Sustainable IT” event, including exclusive interviews with company executives at Pure Storage and an intriguing use case at managed service provider Elmec Informatica S.p.A. (* Disclosure below.)

In case you missed it, here are three key insights from the event:

1) You don’t have to choose between powerful and sustainable technology.

Pure Storage may be further down the path of sustainable IT than some companies, which may be wondering what core elements to focus on beyond IT sustainability team alignment. But the company believes it doesn’t come down to either powerful or sustainable technology.

“There are opportunities to get both, and not just in storage, in your entire IT portfolio,” said Nicole Johnson, global head of social impact and sustainability at Pure Storage Inc. “We know that we’re in a place in the world where we have to look at things from the bigger picture.”

Adopting environmentally efficient solutions and services can actually help scale and deliver more effective IT solutions over time, according to  Johnson.

“We know that our data centers utilize an incredible amount of energy and carbon,” she said. “So everything that we can do to drive that down is going to address the sustainability goals for us individually, as well as drive down that climate change.”

The earlier that sustainability teams can be involved in conversations, the more impactful business decisions will be, Johnson added.

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Nicole Johnson:

2) Adopt an intentional design approach toward projects.

So, what does it look like in practice if companies are thinking about going down the path of sustainable IT? For Pure Storage, as a supplier of products, it involves adopting an intentional design approach with sustainability in mind.

“It’s not something that you handle at the very back end,” said Ajay Singh, chief product officer at Pure Storage Inc. “You design it upfront in the product so that sustainable design becomes very intentional.”

From there, Singh said such a sustainable approach begins to influence every decision the company makes — in his words, it “seeps into the culture.”

“Look at this year with the spike in energy prices, gas prices going up,” Singh said. “It’s super important that all of us do our bit in there and start to drive products that are fundamentally sustainable — not just at the initial install point, but from an end-to-end full lifecycle standpoint.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Ajay Singh:

3) Choosing certain technologies can be a ‘game changer.’

Back in September, Pure Storage added new analytics tools to its server hardware to help customers reach their sustainability goals. That led to education company Cengage Group sharing that it had reduced its overall storage footprint by 80%.

“[They did that] while doubling to tripling the performance of their storage system,” Johnson said. “So it’s really critical for companies who are thinking about their sustainability goals to consider the dynamic between their sustainability program and their IT teams who are making these buying decisions.”

Reducing storage footprints was also a priority for Mattia Ballerio (pictured), technology solutions manager with Elmec Informatica S.p.A.

“We saw that our power consumption usage was much less, more than 90% of previous technology that we used in the past,” Ballerio said. “Of course, you have to manage a gradual deploy of flash technology storage, but it was a good target.”

After that, Elmec approached long-term sustainability by choosing Pure Storage’s technology storage solution. Ballerio said the evergreen models of Pure were a “game changer.”

“It allows us to extend the life cycle management of our data centers, but it also allows us to improve the facilities of using technology from our technical side,” he said. “We are much more efficient than in the past with the choice of Pure Storage.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Mattia Ballerio:

And make sure to watch theCUBE’s complete coverage of the “Pure Storage: The Path to Sustainable IT” event here:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the “Pure Storage: The Path to Sustainable IT” event. Neither Pure Storage Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE