Main sustainability will be understood as fairly much like being in product growth, in line with Niki Armstrong, chief administrative and authorized officer at information storage and administration {hardware} provider Pure Storage.
At Pure, sustainability, particularly within the datacentre, has been a spotlight from the beginning. The corporate’s founder constructed its first merchandise with sustainability in thoughts, alongside the extra conventional notion of adjusting an trade.
In spite of everything, legacy storage is cumbersome, pricey, and takes up quite a lot of area, energy and cooling, which is an costly enterprise when you consider exhausting disks or spinning disks.
“And so, we needed a easy product, one thing straightforward to put in, however that might not additionally create quite a lot of e-waste or forklift upgrades, and migration instances and issues that price cash and sources for firms,” says Armstrong.
Then it turns into a matter of informing follow by means of the ideas of simplicity, creativity and innovation.
Armstrong runs Pure’s sustainability initiatives, the place “fixed, intentional” enchancment is essential.
“I’ve the privilege of main our authorized, our HR groups, and our sustainability organisation, in addition to our social influence perform – we’ve got our company philanthropy underneath me as nicely,” Armstrong says.
“The underside line is, I get all of the enjoyable teams. My remit covers all the pieces from governance and compliance to tradition and expertise, social and sustainability impacts.”
She provides that the joy of the function is inherent within the interconnectivity, because it had been, reasonably than thought-about as separate silos – a remark that can chime with others within the area.
“Sustainability has at all times sat underneath authorized and work. It’s been referred to as ESG [environmental, social and governance], sustainability, influence, you identify it. Nevertheless it’s all to do with the identical challenges. And I’m tremendous enthusiastic about each single a kind of features.”
Linking sustainability, intentionality and innovation
The concentrate on sustainability provides Armstrong the prospect to actually assist, to be a great citizen who can construct and improve a tradition the place accountability, intentionality and innovation can co-exist.
As with one or two different sustainability officers on this sequence, Armstrong brings her authorized and operational lens to the function to realize extra for Pure with fewer sources.
Whereas it doesn’t sound superficially like there’s an particularly inexperienced focus in that title or these departments, HR and authorized are essential companions in all respects, not least as a result of the duty at hand means it’s good to deliver everybody with you over time.
“I like to match our merchandise to wine – they’re higher with age. We’re designing for enduring worth, extending lifespans. Not obsolescence”
Niki Armstrong, Pure Storage
“As with authorized, management and in HR, we’re service organisations, and so we are sometimes working throughout features to affect the end result,” Armstrong confirms. “That comes naturally.”
Nonetheless, her imaginative and prescient is for sustainability ideas, pondering and follow to develop into so embedded that they develop into “a kind of muscle reminiscence” which you could infuse into enterprise technique frequently. That’s against the thought of having the ability to tick off the details after which write about it in annual reporting, after all.
An employment lawyer by background, Armstrong typically discovered herself arguing for numerous events’ viewpoints in courtrooms. And he or she felt strongly that it could be “wonderful” to create an surroundings at a office that would truly cut back the prospect of ending up in courtroom within the first place.
Initially, she had merely questioned the way to obtain such a factor. Over time, nonetheless, her conversations and connections with different trade stakeholders clarified how HR groups and administration may work collectively to create environments “crammed with respect, dignity and engagement”. Sustainability in the end dovetailed productively with that.
After a number of authorized agency roles and a senior company counsel place at Nutanix, the place she remained for 4 years, Armstrong joined Pure Storage in 2017.
“As I grew at Pure, I then took on the chief authorized officer function [in 2022] and got here in to guide the worldwide employment crew,” she says. “On the time, the muse of ESG reporting was only a twinkle in individuals’s eyes.”
At the moment, a number of individuals are on the sustainability crew. Different stakeholders embrace the chief monetary officer (CFO) organisation, provide chain operation, the operations organisation, and the chief technical officer (CTO) workplace.
“All of that type of comes collectively. And for me personally, I’m enthusiastic about creating an surroundings not simply that’s stellar for individuals, but in addition one which goes to be round for my youngsters and my youngsters’ youngsters,” provides Armstrong.
“I really like working for an organization that really cares about that and is making a product that’s higher for his or her neighborhood and our world.”
Certainly, Armstrong says it has been a “actually improbable journey”, instructing her loads in simply eight years at Pure, notably across the sustainability perform, in addition to in governance and compliance. She jokes that she has regularly develop into conversant in “all kinds of latest acronyms”.
Increasing and broadening the duty remit
In the meantime, Armstrong continues to develop and broaden the sustainability remit, together with by means of the Pure Storage company philanthropy arm, lobbying for change with the neighborhood and with the Pure Good Basis.
That could be a “shared duty at Pure” that goes past partnering with organisations centered on local weather change and the surroundings to incorporate different sustainability pillars resembling workforce growth, ladies in sciences, know-how, engineering and maths (STEM), and help for underrepresented teams or psychological well being.
“We concentrate on issues close to and pricey to our hearts,” says Armstrong. “We now have a worldwide workforce. Our workers like to become involved and assist their native communities.”
Sustainability is not only round a product or a single job perform, however about how the entire enterprise operates and delivers outcomes, she provides. Local weather change adaptation is a top-tier precedence at Pure, alongside emissions discount and information safety matters.
I can proudly say that the primary array we ever offered, in December 2011, remains to be in service, and it’s larger and extra environment friendly than ever as a result of that’s our Evergreen promise Niki Armstrong, Pure Storage
Her HR crew focuses on tradition, accountability and management capabilities, whereas her sustainability crew works on turning all of these ideas into measurable motion throughout the Pure enterprise. After which Pure’s product crew thinks about the way to proceed to innovate and constantly enhance its merchandise or make them extra environment friendly to higher serve clients.
Quarterly opinions of progress and any trade-offs comply with to make sure alignment with the identical self-discipline utilized to its personal enterprise efficiency, measurable targets, cross-functional accountability, and board visibility and engagement. After all, there’s threat committee oversight too, and a “extremely engaged” board.
Two board members have accomplished extra coaching and certification in ESG. Meaning spreading the load and sharing the ESG duty, in addition to making certain all of the transferring elements are related.
“Our ESG governance will not be one thing that’s simply merely owned by me,” says Armstrong. “It’s like a four-headed dragon: HR groups, authorized groups, the chief technical officer and his crew, in addition to the worldwide provide chain officer and his crew, all coming along with the chief monetary officer concerned as nicely.”
And targets – aligned the place related with UN sustainable growth targets – are tight. They imply managing emissions reductions for full-year 2025 revenues of $3.17bn (£2.39bn) throughout 13,000 clients, 6,000 workers and greater than 30 nations.
Armstrong can affirm supply on its 2025 science-based initiative (SBTi) commitments. Pure’s targets for Scope 1, 2 and three emissions cuts had been validated in January 2025, with Scope 1 and a couple of ambitions remaining in step with a 1.5ºC temperature rise. Pure is aiming for 42% much less Scope 1 and a couple of emissions by 2030, versus full-year 2023, and net-zero emissions for Scope 1 and a couple of emissions by 2040.
Past that, for Scope 3 reductions, the goal is to halve emissions from the usage of offered merchandise by full-year 2030. Of Pure’s suppliers, 45% are anticipated to have their very own science-based targets too, by 2029, she notes.
Key to Pure’s sustainability benefit is, alongside flash and providers, its cloud focus; it simply is sensible to be software-defined. Additionally, not solely have clients by no means needed to migrate their {hardware}, some have by no means had any downtime regardless of “having been by means of upgrades and a few adjustments”, she says.
“I can proudly say that the primary array we ever offered, in December 2011, remains to be in service, and it’s larger and extra environment friendly than ever as a result of that’s our Evergreen promise,” she says. For context, Evergreen//One is Pure’s storage-as-a-service providing.
“I like to match our merchandise to wine – they’re higher with age. We’re designing for enduring worth, extending lifespans. Not obsolescence.”
One specific buyer has slashed energy wants by 96% by leveraging Pure’s method, “which is unbelievable”. Others have ended up with an IT footprint 1 / 4 of the scale and 97% quicker backup. So, it’s not nearly much less waste and extra sustainability – clients can obtain “extra carry”. Which is all reasonably gratifying, she enthuses.
For the longer term, Pure plans to proceed to steer technique towards larger lifecycle accountability, together with throughout all the provide chain and its product traces. Meaning additional growing materiality reporting and documenting of impacts, and dealing on serving to clients visualise their very own vitality financial savings utilizing the sustainability dashboard in Pure’s proprietary software program.
“Prospects will have the ability to take a look at that and see their price financial savings and vitality financial savings instantly,” says Armstrong.
An general precept is to decouple information progress from vitality and water progress. Some clients are already doing nicely right here, she says, citing one which has reportedly decreased water consumption for cooling by 85%. However extra eco-friendly designs of all merchandise will proceed to be key.
Moreover, Pure has rolled out an EU coverage protecting vitality, waste and water administration, in addition to an environmental sustainability product coverage. About 70% of its suppliers, by spend, are already lined by that, and Armstrong says the plan is to maneuver extra of Pure’s suppliers beneath that.
“We’re additionally centered on competing with ourselves – we take a look at issues like Sustainalytics and EcoVadis, asking how will we get higher in opposition to ourselves? What did we do final yr that units the brand new baseline? Then we go into the subsequent yr with the objective of getting higher than that,” she says.
