Alliance for Sustainability, the new piece of Microsoft's Ambition Italy program

Source: HW Upgrade added 04th Nov 2020

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Alliance for Sustainability #DigitalRestart is an initiative that aims to develop new projects to face the most urgent climatic and environmental challenges and to spread a new green culture. All this by leveraging technology

by Alberto Falchi , Vittorio Manti published on , at 19: 14 in the Innovation channel

Microsoft

Microsoft’s commitment to sustainability is renewed with Alliance for Sustainability , a ecosystem of open innovation aimed at promoting sustainable growth . The project is part of the Ambizione Italia #DigitalRestart program, the 1.5 billion investment plan that the Redmond giant announced last May and which provides digital training courses for 1.5 million people (students, professionals, unemployed ) designed to reduce the skills gap which is a major obstacle to development.

What is the Alliance for Sustainability

The Microsoft project is made together with growITup, the Open Innovation platform created by Cariplo Factory , and has as founding partner B4i – Bocconi for innovation, CDP, Coop, Energy & Strategy MIP – Politecnico di Milano, FLOWE, Intesa Sanpaolo, Italgas and Snam. needs related to the theme of sustainability, identify synergies and above all ensure that the ideas collected are transformed into concrete solutions, through collaboration with startups and involvement in hackathon .

As he explains Lucas Joppa, Chief Environmental Officer , Covid is the problem of the year, but the issue of sustainability is the problem of the decade, and it is urgent to address it. For its part, Microsoft aims to become carbon negative by 2030 and to remove from the environment, by 2050, all carbon emitted by the company since its foundation.

Alliance for Sustainability has three phases:

  • Phase 1: mapping of market trends and collection of needs by companies also applying methodologies of design thinking ;
  • Phase 2: consolidation of the project lines that meet the needs highlighted in phase 1 and launch of brainstorming involving companies and startups in order to define initial concepts;
  • Phase 3 : identification of the startups for each concept, development of the ideas launch of the pilot projects.

    • “ We are proud to present the start of the works of a another important piece of our investment plan in the country, just 5 months after its launch “- stated Silvia Candiani, CEO of Microsoft Italy – “Italy’s growth and recovery must pass from digital to sustainability and through this initiative we can make a concrete and systematic contribution to identifying a new green way for our future. The Alliance for Sustainability starts with a collaborative spirit between all the actors involved and among those who will join us in the coming months, because this is a challenge to be faced all together “.

    Microsoft Sustainability Calculator, calculate the impact on the environment of your use of Azure

    Microsoft Sustainability Calculator is a new tool made available by the company that leverages artificial intelligence and data analytics to provide companies with information on how to reduce their emissions and process reporting activities: thanks to this tool, companies will be able to calculate the impact of their services running on Azure and the increase in the level of sustainability when moving additional services and applications to the cloud.