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# Introducing Green IT practices to a large Software Company

How do you track the carbon emissions of 200,000 messages per second when cloud metrics fail? Discover how Amadeus built custom pipelines to eliminate massive architectural waste.

- **Speakers:** Pierre-Luc Noel, Fritz Reichmann
- **Event:** World Congress 2023
- **Published:** October 23, 2023
- **Duration:** 29:31
- **URL:** https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/792-introducing-green-it-practices-to-a-large-software-company

## Summary

Amadeus, a major player in travel tech processing up to 200,000 messages per second, recognized that the IT sector's 4% contribution to global carbon emissions rivals the aviation industry. To take accountability, they embarked on a sustainability journey prioritizing culture shift before technical execution. They utilized the immersive "Climate Fresk" workshop and the Green Software Foundation's principles to build foundational awareness, a shared vocabulary, and internal communities, successfully utilizing "healthy pressure" to secure executive ESG buy-in.

Transitioning from education to active measurement, engineering teams faced the hurdle of assessing precise carbon intensity. Relying purely on cloud providers like Azure proved insufficient due to reporting delays, lack of granular workload allocation, and grid masking—where purchased renewable energy contracts fail to reflect the physical grid's actual carbon reality. To solve this, teams built custom pipelines combining applicative telemetry with open-source tools like CarbonQL and real-time grid data to map CPU, memory, and network usage directly to specific carbon emission numbers.

Armed with accurate metrics, the company deployed green software patterns to hunt down waste. A dedicated "Waste Buster" campaign incentivized developers to eliminate 20% of daily logging volume from a three-petabyte baseline. They also benchmarked architectural tradeoffs, such as decoupling a multi-gigabyte applicative cache into a standalone microservice to balance storage reduction against increased network calls. Additionally, simple tweaks like enabling Link Time Optimization compiler flags reduced CPU load by 9%. This journey validated that eco-friendly engineering seamlessly aligns with the bottom line, proving that "being more green goes hand in hand with being more cost-efficient."

**Keywords:** green IT practices, software carbon intensity, climate fresk workshop, green software foundation, carbonql open source, applicative telemetry, cloud carbon footprint limitations, green software patterns, caching architecture tradeoffs, link time optimization, IT sustainability culture, real-time grid carbon mapping, ESG executive buy-in, waste buster campaign

## Chapters

1. **Introducing company scale and the need for green IT** (00:11) — The massive scale of modern data centers necessitates deliberate strategies to mitigate their environmental footprint.
1. **Analyzing the climate impact of the software industry** (02:31) — Understanding how hardware manufacturing, network operations, and end devices aggregate to produce significant global carbon emissions.
1. **Building a roadmap for cultural and technical sustainability** (04:26) — A phased approach prioritizing developer awareness before implementing measurement strategies accelerates the adoption of efficient engineering.
1. **Spreading climate awareness using the Climate Fresk game** (07:31) — Interactive workshops translate complex scientific reports on global warming into engaging, actionable insights for engineering units.
1. **Fostering knowledge sharing through internal sustainability communities** (09:39) — Creating structured online spaces allows distributed engineers to exchange best practices for managing tech ecosystem footprints.
1. **Establishing shared vocabulary with Green Software Foundation principles** (11:34) — Providing standardized Linux Foundation training ensures that distinct engineering sites benchmark application efficiency consistently.
1. **Calculating software carbon intensity using the SCI model** (12:47) — Environmental impact can be quantified mathematically by analyzing grid cleanliness alongside hardware and operational computing demands.
1. **Identifying limitations in cloud provider carbon emission reporting** (14:55) — Built-in cloud analytics often lack the real-time granularity and locational accuracy necessary to build genuinely carbon-aware software.
1. **Converting application telemetry into real-time carbon usage data** (16:53) — By routing standard resource metrics through open-source models, teams can generate highly accurate live energy consumption dashboards.
1. **Decreasing computational overhead using compiler link time optimization** (19:42) — Simple configuration changes during the build process can significantly lower CPU utilization and raw electricity requirements.
1. **Minimizing infrastructure waste by reducing application log volumes** (23:03) — Auditing system artifacts empowers organizations to eliminate redundant data storage and decrease ongoing backend processing dependencies.
1. **Trade-offs between storage and network resources in caching architectures** (24:36) — Shifting cache mechanisms from localized processing pods to distinct microservices requires careful consideration of application traffic patterns.
1. **Securing management budget and ensuring long-term cultural shifts** (26:34) — Highlighting the overlap between operational cost reduction and ecological improvements is essential for sustaining ongoing infrastructure projects.

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