Eindhoven-based Copaco is well-known for the cloud services and solutions it offers for managed service providers – including managed security service providers – independent software vendors and systems integrators throughout Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Delivered from the company’s highly advanced data centers, the Copaco Cloud, powered by VMware technologies, provides the core of the company’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service Offering (IaaS).
We recently connected with Pascal Saul, Senior Cloud Architect of Copaco, to learn why the company elected to embrace the VMware Zero Carbon Committed initiative. We also took the opportunity to learn how he sees a more sustainable approach to IT benefiting customers and the enterprises they serve.
“We offer a variety of cloud services, including those that address productivity, security, backup, disaster recovery, and IaaS-related needs,” said Saul. “We also offer online self-service portals managed service providers can in turn provide to their customers to perfect the user experience. This includes APIs that make it easy for providers to manage all of their subscriptions online within a Copaco platform that provisions and manages all billing processes with ease. We are essentially enabling providers of bespoke IT services to offer a best-in-class private cloud platform that can also be used for public cloud and multi-cloud deployments – all while relying on VMware technologies beloved by system and network engineers.”
Notably, Copaco also provides fast and easy access to hardware, including everything from servers to enterprise-grade mobile devices and professional services. This multi-faceted nature of the company’s business is reflected in its approach to sustainability.
“As part of our commitment and decision to join the VMware Zero Carbon Committed initiative, we are initially focusing on three key areas: incorporating sustainability into our purchasing policy, reducing energy usage while simultaneously increasing energy efficiency, and reducing the waste associated with packaging materials,” adds Saul. “Our data centers are powered with renewable energy and with our commitment to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2030, we are likewise committed to ensuring that sustainability is constantly top-of-mind not only among our own employees, but also our existing customers and prospective ones.”
It’s an endeavor he believes is not only the right thing to do for the planet, but is also good business.
“As a cloud services provider, distributor, and partner who manages the logistics required to ensure that enterprises’ IT needs are met, we believe sustainability and our company goals go hand-in-hand,” Saul says. “Increasingly your energy efficiency helps you reduce costs and CO2 emissions, and reducing packaging materials, combining orders as efficiently as possible has the same result. Every step forward helps the planet, contributes to our profits, and sends a positive message to our employees, customers, and vendors.”
He also notes that efforts to be more environmentally friendly help to attract new, young IT talent to the company. In addition, sustainability is increasingly more important for customers, both as a “soft ask” and as a formal requirement in requests for proposals.
“Awareness is increasing, and customers want the organizations they work with to be transparent about their sustainability policies, carbon emissions, purchasing standards, vendor selection, waste reduction, and management,” he adds. “There is so much to win, and we have to win.”
On this last point, Saul stresses that the outcomes extend far beyond the confines of the business landscape or even the IT ecosystem.
“We must all act for environment, for future generations, and for parts of the world that already face the negative efforts of global warming and climate change,” he says. “We need to raise awareness and fight the human tendency to lose sight of long-term effects, underestimate the scope of big problems, or fail to appreciate the urgency of the situation. That is why it is so important to combine efforts to increase sustainability and profits.”
Learn more about Copaco and its partnership with VMware here.
