96
What does sustainability mean for IT?
View this email in your browser
The weekly newsletter of the Business of Tech, giving you new insights into the world of IT service delivery.
Looking for stories from the podcast stories? Check out the pod itself on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or daily in your inbox. Stories are available to everyone for five days,and Patreon supporters forever.
Was this forwarded to you? Join the list!
What does sustainability mean for IT?
What’s the state of sustainable IT? Is the market more amenable to it? How are vendors implementing AI? Where’s the AI/IT market going?
Only one person could answer these questions and more in a single interview: Srini Koushik, President of Technology and Sustainability at Rackspace. Between his expertise in technical strategy, hybrid cloud innovation, and sustainable IT practices — and his time at IBM, Magellan Health, and the NTT Innovation Institute — Koushik had plenty of insights to share on a recent bonus episode of The Business of Tech.
Keep reading for a dynamic deep dive into some of our industry’s most pressing topics.
Can green IT redeem itself?
We kicked off our conversation with a look at sustainability; I’ve personally felt burned by some of the early green IT initiatives that failed to take off in the early aughts and 2010s, but one of Koushik’s latest focuses has been incorporating it into services.
Most importantly, I wanted to know what’s different about this moment for sustainable IT?
First of all, culturally, Koushik believes that the world is more ready to accept and explore sustainable innovations. Politics and cause aside, the climate is changing, so people are simply more interested in sustainability.
However, Koushik took this a step further, explaining that two other issues are underscoring the importance of sustainable business practices: skyrocketing income inequality and ethical AI. Together, they’ve created the right landscape to revisit sustainability:
“In order for us to continue to thrive with all of the new tech that’s coming out, we’ve got to be a lot more conscious about how we consume energy and what we use it for. You also have to make sure that as we go through this AI revolution, we don’t repeat what we did when we went through the cloud and internet revolution, which is the haves have a lot more, the have-nots are left behind,” he said.
Sustainable frameworks to consider
All of that makes sense, but in practice, should MSPs be more focused on implementing sustainability or choosing sustainably-minded vendors to do so? What’s the framework that providers should be thinking about when they’re applying sustainability for themselves and their customers?
At a high level, Koushik says that this shouldn’t feel too different from making conscious choices in our personal lives, like when we buy LED light bulbs and turn off lights when leaving the room.
Within that mentality, he says, who you buy from absolutely matters. It’s important to select partners with well-placed data centers, for example, but he also believes in using governance and compliance to make those choices.
From scope one and two, which is what you use to run your businesses, all the way to scope three, which is where you procure your services, he encourages MSPs to consider how green their partners are based on available data and reporting.
Rackspace’s approach to AI
Let’s pivot to everyone’s favorite topic of 2024. How does an organization like Rackspace think about AI, its offerings, and how to go about implementing it?
Koushik broke Rackspace’s view of AI into three buckets.
First, AI has to be symbiotic with human beings. It has to allow them to grow, and it shouldn’t worsen income inequality later down the road.
Second, AI has to be secure. From LLM providers to tool developers, you need to be able to identify how an AI is using your data, where it’s going, and how other people’s data is being used, too.
Third, AI has to be implemented and utilized sustainably. If it takes someone’s job away, then, in Kaushik’s view, you just spent a lot of energy on hurting a human being.
Together, these three S’s are Rackspace’s formula for ‘responsible AI.’ Because Rackspace has been managing and running production workloads for 25+ years, they hope to use their industry expertise to promote this ethical approach.
Who should do what for AI implementation?
Those values can apply to anyone who comes in contact with AI, but how do those responsibilities get split up in a partnership? Rackspace might do some of the work, but MSPs also carry a lot of the weight, so I asked Koushik to share who’s doing what when we’re having AI conversations with customers.
Koushik agrees that for AI to be really effective within a business, multiple partners need to implement it. And he’s not just talking about ChatGPT or Claude – he believes that for any organization to get the best benefit out of AI, they have to go beyond the generic and invest in something more specific.
“The best way to think about AI is to think about it as an employee or think about it as a coworker. Because what you’re doing is you’re training an AI on your process. into your day-to-day work. Most organizations start to see the benefit of AI when they take their knowledge that they’ve built and get it to run within your enterprise.”
But Rackspace wouldn’t necessarily approach your customers alone. They partner with MSPs to actually incorporate it as part of their solutions offerings, and they also partner with LLM providers. They’re big believers in open innovation and open partnerships:
“I don’t think there’s any one company that can do it all. There’s going to be companies that try to do everything, but in this space, having that partnership mindset and building it that way is what’s going to make it work.”
After all, for customers to thrive with AI, it has to be trained on their data. That’s where – according to Koushik – the MSP comes in. A small organization could simply take a product, connect it to their customer’s data, and be good to go.
However, Koushik also believes that MSPs will need to spend more time training people who will actually use the AI. And it won’t just be as simple as a quick how-to; you’re asking people to change how they’ve been doing things for 20 years.
“It’s not just about training the AI with our data. It’s about training human beings on how to change their approach so that they can drive that productivity,” he said.
Opportunities for IT service providers
Looking ahead, where does Koushik believe the IT market has room to grow? Two words: tech debt. But he’s actually optimistic here – he believes that AI will be able to solve this issue once and for all.
To wrap things up, he also shared a final piece of advice for MSPs: lean into problem-solving and critical thinking capabilities as they relate to AI. If we rely on AI too much, they’ll become rare skills, so find a way to get organizations and individuals focused on prioritizing critical thinking.
I couldn’t agree more about where the value of the MSP will lie in the future of AI in IT.
What are your recent experiences with green IT? Do you have a sustainability framework you like? As always, my inbox is open for stories, insights, questions, and whatever else is on your mind.
More from MSP Radio
Missed Things?
How about our latest videos to catch you up?
The Daily Podcast available as videos
AI in Product Development: Enhancing Workflows & Minimum Iteration w/ Cody Schneider
Global Talent Management Strategies for International Recruiting in Today’s Market w Jonathan Romley
Building Diverse and Flexible Workforces with AI in Tech Hiring Strategies w/ Hugo Malan
Revolutionizing Healthcare with AI and Data Analytics: A Conversation with RJ Kedziora
FBI Cybersecurity Strategy: Ransomware, Incident Response, & Emerging Threats with Brett Leatherman
Lake House Architecture: Cost, Efficiency, AI Integration, and Data Governance Trends w/ Ori Rafael
Want the Daily News?
All the stories from the daily Business of Tech Podcast are available in the daily digest, and stories are available to everyone for the first five days, and Patreon supporters forever. Catch the audio of the show anytime on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you find podcasts. Links at businessof.tech
Copyright © 2024 MSP Radio, All rights reserved.
Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.