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What Rackspace’s CTO Means by Sustainability Beyond Going Green

Rackspace’s CTO described sustainability in IT as more than emissions reduction: it also includes economic opportunity, workforce transitions and equitable technology.
From TheFinanceBase Team4 min to read
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For Rackspace Technology’s CTO in 2023, sustainability in IT meant more than reducing emissions. Srini Koushik described three connected responsibilities: environmental impact, economic opportunity and equitable technology. That broader view matters because infrastructure choices affect not only energy use, but also who can access technology, what happens to workers whose roles change, and whether data and algorithms treat people fairly.

What does sustainability mean beyond going green?

Koushik, identified as Rackspace Technology’s CTO in a July 2023 CIO profile, framed IT sustainability around three dimensions:

  • Environmental sustainability: managing energy use and emissions associated with technology and infrastructure.
  • Economic sustainability: widening access to jobs, broadband and technology resources, while helping people adapt as technology changes work.
  • Equitable sustainability: addressing bias in data and algorithms, including systems used in generative AI.

Rackspace had described a similar three-part framework in an earlier 2022 company post. The point is not that every IT decision can advance all three dimensions equally. It is that a decision that improves energy performance may still have workforce or fairness consequences worth considering.

How did Rackspace describe its environmental approach?

The 2023 CIO feature reported several operational examples: consolidating infrastructure, moving workloads to cloud locations where Rackspace could access greener energy, using serverless computing where possible in public cloud, and tuning virtual machines for applications that had not yet been modernized. These are examples reported at the time, not a verified description of Rackspace’s current operations.

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The article also reported that Rackspace’s workloads were then split 60% on Google Cloud and 40% in its private cloud. That is a July 2023 snapshot, not a current workload breakdown. The feature did not quantify emissions for public cloud versus private cloud, so the examples do not establish that moving a workload to cloud automatically lowers its emissions.

For IT leaders comparing options, the useful question is not simply “cloud or data center?” It is whether the specific workload, location and provider can meet operational needs while offering credible evidence about energy sourcing and environmental impact.

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Why does the framework include jobs and access?

Economic sustainability includes what happens to people when infrastructure changes. As organizations move away from managing on-premises servers, some employees’ established skills may no longer match the work. Koushik described Rackspace’s TOPs program as training data-center engineers in cloud technologies or SaaS models.

“If you’re moving to an environment where you’re not managing servers anymore, the Linux engineers need a path forward,” Koushik says. “What we must do is continuously train our people. We have some of the best Linux engineers and we can’t leave them behind.”

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That example connects a technical migration to a workforce choice: whether people are given a path to develop relevant skills, rather than being treated as a cost to remove. The broader economic dimension also includes access to jobs, broadband and technology resources.

What does equitable sustainability require of AI?

Equity becomes a sustainability concern when data or algorithms encode or amplify bias. The CIO feature specifically raised that risk in connection with generative AI. Koushik said Rackspace wanted to help customers adopt the technology while considering its broader consequences:

“We believe in the potential of generative AI and we want to help our customers get there, but we want to help them do it in a responsible and sustainable manner,” he says.

In practice, that framing asks technology leaders to consider who may be disadvantaged by the data and systems they use, alongside the benefits they expect the technology to deliver.

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What did the 2023 survey say about sustainability priorities?

The CIO feature reported findings from an IDC survey of 465 data-center decision makers conducted in January 2023. Among enterprise and service-provider decision makers, capacity ranked first, followed by power and cooling reliability; sustainability ranked fifth. The article also reported a then-current expectation that sustainability would rise into the top three provider-selection criteria within two years. That was a forecast reported in 2023, not evidence that the ranking later changed.

The results illustrate a practical tension: sustainability has to be considered alongside capacity and reliability, not in place of them. The survey finding is attributed to IDC as reported by CIO; the feature does not provide a basis here for treating it as a current measure of buyer priorities.

How can leaders apply the broader view to IT decisions?

When comparing infrastructure choices or providers, assess the same decision across the framework’s connected dimensions. The CIO feature offers examples, not a comparative lifecycle analysis, so it does not settle which option is greener in a particular case.

  • Environmental evidence: What information is available about energy use, emissions and energy sourcing for the workload and location?
  • Workload fit and reliability: Can the option meet capacity and operational requirements? Is serverless, a tuned virtual machine, or another arrangement suitable for the application?
  • Cost and access: How does the choice affect the economics of providing technology and access to resources?
  • Workforce transition: If responsibilities change, is there a credible retraining path for affected employees?
  • Accessibility and bias: Could the data or algorithms involved disadvantage particular people or groups?
  • Provider reporting: Can the provider explain its sustainability approach clearly enough for the organization to evaluate it?

Koushik’s central argument was that technology leaders have influence because organizations depend increasingly on technology. As he put it: “CIOs have an opportunity to take the leadership position on sustainability because organizations are getting more heavily dependent on technology,” he says. “It’s just a question of choice.”

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What has Rackspace said since the 2023 profile?

Rackspace’s 2025 Sustainability Report says that its science-based targets were validated by the Science Based Targets initiative and set a company net-zero target for 2045. This is Rackspace’s reported target, not a claim that net zero has already been achieved or an independent assessment of the 2023 operational examples. Rackspace’s sustainability page also presents renewable energy and conservation as parts of its strategy.

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