Greening Digital Sustainability with Dr. Ong Chen Hui

CXO Bytes

Welcome to the first episode of CXO Bytes! Join host Sanjay Podder as he talks to leaders in technology, sustainability, and AI in their pursuit of a sustainable future through green software. Joined by Dr. Ong Chen Hui, Assistant CEO of Singapore's Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), the discussion focuses on Singapore's comprehensive approach to digital sustainability. Dr. Ong highlights IMDA's efforts to drive green software adoption across various sectors, emphasizing the importance of efficiency in data centers and the broader ICT ecosystem. So join us for an intriguing and though provoking conservation about the critical role of government and industry collaboration in achieving sustainability goals amidst the growing demand for digital technologies.

Learn more about our people:

• Sanjay Podder: LinkedIn
• Dr. Ong Chen Hui: LinkedIn

Find out more about the GSF:

• The Green Software Foundation Website
• Sign up to the Green Software Foundation Newsletter

Resources:

• IMDA [01:20]
• Government Technology Agency | Singapore [01:54]
• Singapore Green Plan 2030 [02:55]
• IMDA and GovTech unveil new initiatives to drive digital sustainability | IMDA - Infocomm Media Development Authority [10:19]
• Your Guide to the Gartner Top Strategic Technology Trends in Software Engineering [10:56]
• Asia Tech x Singapore [23:37]
• Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification Project | GSF [25:11]
• Welcome to Impact Framework {33:31]
• Green Software Foundation [34:00]
• Digital Sustainability Forum | ATxSummit [37:33]

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:

• Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
• Follow and rate on Spotify
• Watch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!

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TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Sanjay Podder: Hello and welcome to CXO Bytes, a podcast brought to you by the Green Software Foundation and dedicated to supporting chiefs of information, technology, sustainability, and AI as they aim to shape a sustainable future through green software. We will uncover the strategies and a big green move that's helped drive results for business and for the planet.

I am your host, Sanjay Podder.

Hello everyone. Welcome to CXO Bytes. This is our inaugural podcast on how do you use green software for building a sustainable future. This is a new podcast series and the whole idea behind it is, you know, embracing a culture of green software, it needs to come from the top. And we therefore want to talk with decision makers, with business leaders, with leaders who are running nation states like Singapore, for example, at sea level.

You know, how are they driving this culture change when it comes to digital sustainability and green software, for example?

Today I am super excited to invite Dr. Ong. She is the Assistant CEO of IMDA, which is the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore. And we are going to chat on how IMDA is championing digital sustainability as well as green software. Welcome, Dr. Ong.

Dr. Ong Chen Hui: Thank you for having me on your inaugural podcast on green software.

Sanjay Podder: And you know, I had my own selfish reason for inviting you because while the Green Software Foundation has been interacting with many, many large businesses across the world, IMDA and Singapore GovTech, these are two members of Green Software Foundation who represent the government, right?

And we all know the very important role that government will play in sustainability in general. So I wanted to understand from you, you know, how are you looking into this space? So we will talk a lot about that. The other aspect is probably to begin with, for our audience, a perspective on what is IMDA.

You know, what is your specific remit, what you are trying to do in Singapore, if you can give us, you know, a few insights into that.

Dr. Ong Chen Hui: Okay, so here in Singapore, of course, climate change is actually something that is a bit of a existential thing for us, us being a small nation state and we're also an island, to us, climate change and the associated rising sea level is a matter of concern. Right? So, as a result, we have put in a green plan that states our, sustainability goals by the time we reach 2050. And this is actually a whole government effort. So, I don't think it is a case where it's one ministry or one agency that's responsible for the whole world. It is about the whole of government working together in order to make sure that we meet the goals of our Green Plan.

Now, what are some of the things that we are doing? Many things, for example, the National Environment Agency is actually rolling out some of the regulations. We have things like e-waste management, for example. Just now you mentioned GovTech, which is our sister agency. GovTech is also rolling out green procurement when they're actually procuring software solutions. Within IMDA, we are responsible for some of the industry development. We're also what we call a sectoral lead of the ICT sector. So, our own green strategy, comprised broadly of three different strokes. The first is about greening ourselves as an organization.

The second is really about greening the sector that we are responsible for, that we are leading. So, in that case, there will be things like the telecommunications sector, the media sector. And the third thing we want to do is to enable our ICT solution providers to provide green solutions to the broader economy so that we can scale the adoption, we can ease the friction out there in the ecosystem.

So essentially, that's greening ourselves, greening the sector, as the lead. And the third is really to kind of provide solutions through the ecosystem so that the wider community can actually benefit.

Sanjay Podder: Now this is really a full 360 degree kind of approach and it is phenomenal. And, I was, I was wondering, you know, and you mentioned briefly on Singapore being an island state. I was thinking, why digital sustainability? What will happen if Singapore decides not to do it, for example, right? Do you have a point of view, say, because, you know, there are many different levers of, sustainability, you know, I can understand the larger sustainability, but what is the importance of digital sustainability?

Do you think it's an important enough lever or maybe you can look at nature biodiversity or something else, right? So specifically for digital sustainability. What is it that triggers IMDA that this is a important initiative? And I'm, I'm seeing this is my second year in Asia Tech that, you know, this is something you give a lot of importance to.

Bringing in leaders from various organizations. Doing deep deliberation. I also remember last year, you brought out your new data center standards, I think increasing the temperature by one degree that has an implication. If you could throw a little bit more light on digital sustainability in particular,

Dr. Ong Chen Hui: Mm hmm.

Sanjay Podder: why do you feel that's a very important lever for a country like Singapore and maybe for many other countries around the world?

Dr. Ong Chen Hui: Yeah. Well, I think you're actually exactly right that when we are trying to drive sustainability, actually there are many different strokes. Some of it includes looking at energy sources and all that, which actually is also very important for Singapore because we are small. We do, have to look at, different kinds of energy sources and how we can potentially actually import some of them, right?

Now, when it comes to digital sustainability, actually our journey, I would say started many years ago. Maybe more than a decade ago, when we started looking at, some of the research work within the research community about, making sure that our data centers, can operate more efficiently in the tropical climate.

Now, data centers, comprise of almost a fifth, of the ICT carbon emissions. And because they are such a huge component of the carbon emissions, of course, their efficiency has always been top of the mind. Now in the tropical climate like ours, a large part of the energy sometimes is attributed to the cooling systems, right?

The air conditioning that's actually needed to bring the temperatures down. So as you rightly pointed out, what we found out is that actually if you were to increase the temperature by one degree, that can lead to a savings of between two to five percent off. Carbon emissions. So, and that as a result, we have been investing in research within our academia, funding some of the innovation projects with our ITC players, in order to look at what actually works and what doesn't.

Because I think in Singapore, regulations always need to be balanced with innovation. So that have kind of, led to what happened last year, which was that we released the first, standards for tropical data sensors. But we wanted to go a lot more, right, because some of those standards, around cooling and all that, that's kind of like looking at how efficient the radiators are in a car.

But we also need to look at how efficient the engines are. And the reality is that, if you look at the trends of ICT usage of software applications. I mean, so much of our lives, whether it is watching videos, watching TikTok, right, our education, around all that, most of this have moved to become, to be enabled by digital technologies.

And when we look at the consumption of, data centers and the kind of workload in it, it is increasing year by year. Now, with the explosion of AI, we know that the trend is probably that there will be more consumption of digital technologies. And those are the engines that sits withinssb the data centers.

And we need to make them efficient. And as a result of that, we have decided that we need to also get onto this journey of greening the software stack. And greening the software stack means a few things. The first is, of course, I think this is still a fairly nascent area. How do we make software more measurable, so that there's a basis of comparison, so that we can identify hot spots that I think is important.

The second part that I think is important is also, given all the trends today, GPUs, CPUs all needing to work together, how do you make them work efficiently? How do you process data efficiently? How do you make sure that the networks and the interconnects within the data centers are efficient.

I think all of these are worthy problems, to look at. Some of it will rightfully stay, still in the research stage. So we'll be funding, research programs, called the Green Computing Funding Initiative around it. But at the same time, we also think that there are some practices that may be a bit more mature already, and we should encourage companies to actually innovate on top of it.

So we're also conducting green software.

Sanjay Podder: I've heard about that, you know, and that's so innovative. I myself try to engage with all my clients in embracing green software. It is not a trivial

Dr. Ong Chen Hui: Yes.

Sanjay Podder: challenge, you know, because I feel that it's a new way of doing things. In fact, I just read a Gartner report on top, software engineering trends in which they say green software engineering is one of the five.

10 percent of the organizations they surveyed, they have green software or sustainability as one of the non functional requirements of software, but they believe in the next three years, by 2027, 30 percent of organizations will have green software engineering as a requirement for software development.

So this is. Indeed, growing very rapidly. But having said that, you know, the, there are a lot of adoption challenges because people are, even if they want to do it, there are a few challenges here. First of all, people may not want to do it thinking, "Oh, this is a small problem, not worth solving. I will procure a lot of renewable energy, or I will buy offset and my problem is gone," right?

And then there will be people who will say, "Oh no, this is... offset is not the answer. Renewable energy is not the answer. We have to inherently lower the emission or the energy required for software, make software carbon efficient." But then, where are the standards? How do we do it? Our people do not know how to do it.

And I'm talking about organization. You're talking about country. It's a very big problem. Now, the question to you, therefore, is, you know, how are you getting people excited in Singapore? And you also mentioned small, medium business, ecosystem. So it's a diverse ecosystem entity. So what has been your approach to make people excited, enable them?

And what would be your North Star? Like, what will make you super happy that I've done my job, you know, this is what I wanted do. So, how do you look at it, Dr. Ong? Okay,

Dr. Ong Chen Hui: Okay, I guess, maybe I'll answer the question of the North Star first. A country like Singapore, we do have a very limited carbon budget. Right? To me, if we can create some carbon headroom for Singapore, so that, we can have more options for, For different aspects of our economic growth, I think that will be, the best outcome that we can actually aim for.

That's a great point. Yeah. Now, in order to be able to do that, you're right. It isn't just about the government waving a flag and saying that that's very important. It may not just be sufficient for a few companies to go about doing it. What we want to be able to drive this across the entire ecosystem.

Now, of course, there will be some companies that are very much more forward looking, and may have already embraced many of these practices. They may even have, taken stock of what is it that they have, where they can actually improve, in terms of their carbon emissions. And there will be others who are still a bit more tentative and on the fence, right?

And the question in my mind is, so what can we help this first group? How can we help that group in the middle as well? I think for those in the first group, and we have seen some which are very advanced, right? They are talking about the fact that maybe they already have a very large, applications footprint.

E-commerce, all that, for example. And they are looking, constantly looking at how to refresh a stack. Because they need to perhaps drive down the cost of operations. And this particular group, they sometimes have very advanced needs. They may be talking about increasing the level of control so that they can dynamically schedule their tasks and bring down efficient, bring up the efficiency of the entire system.

They may be talking about advanced partnerships, with some of their vendors in order to make sure that, they continue to leverage on the best and most efficient, from their supply chain. And for some of these, what we have, tried to do with them, is to, orchestrate, or we call it matchmaking, together with, our academia, right, to look at what projects that they can actually do together so that they can create new IP in this area so that they can continue to be a forefront and leverage on all these,, ideas, solutions, that perhaps the researchers are better equipped to provide.

But there's a group in the middle, I think, who may want to see something a bit more concrete. They want, they may have read that there are things that they can implement, but they're not quite sure where to actually invest their time. And if we think a bit about it from an organization point of view, it's not like they can experiment indefinitely, right?

So I think they want to be a bit more targeted. I think for this particular group, the question is, "how can we actually encourage innovation?" Are there, solution providers who may, know a bit more in this area that can increase awareness and kind of bring a bit more focus to the innovation? Are there best practices, guides, frameworks that we can put out there that can actually encourage the innovation and allow some of these companies to explain to their C suite that this is, how should I say, a systematic approach to innovation. And so for the former, what we wanted to do from the Green Software Trust is a little around that, right? To increase awareness, bring the solution providers to work together with the companies, let them see that actually some of this green software world, digital sustainability world, it's not just about doing good, but there's a possibility to do well as well.

Right? In that you're actually, improving your bottom lines and all that. And the other part is really to work with organizations like Green Software Foundation in order to make sure that things like, best practices, guides, broader ecosystem awareness, as well as standards, is something that we can actually collaborate together as a whole ecosystem in order to make sure that over time, this being a journey of innovation, over time, we'll be able to mature many of these practices.

And actually, maybe perhaps reduce some of the risk that organizations may perceive, that they want more clarity about how things ought to be done.

Sanjay Podder: I think that's, that's a very nice, comprehensive, you know, approach to what you're doing. You mentioned a few things, DR. Ong, that caught my attention. One was, you mentioned about AI, right? And the whole world is talking about AI now. Which is good. It's almost magical what we are seeing with LLM.

But then there is a dark side to it. And the dark side is, when you look at, some of the reports around, the impact of large language models on the environment. You know, there was a very recent study, from Hugging Face that says every time you generate an image in your LLM, it consumes a full charge of an iPhone, for example, right?

So, and as consumers, we don't realize that, you know, we must be, we are like generating images, which we may not even look at it the next time, but we don't realize behind the scene. You know, so much energy was used, and these are like, we are talking about 176 billion parameters, models, and there's a mad rush everywhere in the world to create these large models, the bigger the better.

But the bigger also means more energy needed.

Dr. Ong Chen Hui: Yeah.

Sanjay Podder: Every time you do an inference, the whole machine gets fired up. And, and then the, interesting bit is, the environmental impact because you need so much energy. Many parts of the world, you know, there is still fossil fuel used to generate those

Dr. Ong Chen Hui: Hmm.

Sanjay Podder: You need some of the biggest data centers to be built for our new AI world, right? And then there's impact to water, for example. Another very interesting study that pointed out that every 30 to 50 friends is half a liter of water for cooling, for example. So, while there is no doubt that generative AI is a magical technology that is going to change our world, I'm sure as, as a government body, as a regulator for media and info, this is something probably you're watching very closely, you know, how do we respond to this?

challenge that this magical technology brings. What has been your, approach to Gen AI? I'm sure Asia Tech, you're going to find out a lot of answers, but yeah.

Dr. Ong Chen Hui: I think this thing about greening of AI is a very important problem. When it comes to greening of AI, I think there are a few different dimensions to it. One is, can we actually design the AI a little bit differently? So that the training of it, doesn't take as much energy. Just like you mentioned about inference, right?

Generating the, an image. But I was reading some of the statistics about, the training of AI models using, previous generation of transformer technologies and already that it may be equivalent to, the carbon emissions that a few cars, actually make in their entire lifetime. So I think when it comes to AI, while we refer to AI actually perhaps some of the thinking that we are hearing from both the industry as well as academia around us is that we may need to look at different phases of AI.

So the training itself may be one kind, and it may, require a certain technology stack. Today, the inference technology stack is exactly the same as the technology stack for training. And perhaps that may need to specialize, so that you have a far more efficient kind of technology stack, that will be used for inference.

And if there can be a more customized, more, targeted kind of technology stack. Perhaps that will lead to some kind of energy savings as well as reduction in emissions. But this, I think, is still very early because we are talking about specialized AI chips, right? I think some of it, may still be very much ideas in research or in early stage startups.

Yeah. And then there is, of course, the other point, which is really about how much generative AI is actually consuming in terms of data and because of the amount of data that actually needs to be consumed, the kind of efficiency in data processing and all that, that also actually takes up, quite a bit of emissions.

So around that, I think there may be a need to look at, different kinds of architectures that can make do with less data. And as a result of making do with less data, they, the footprint may be a lot smaller and the amount of energy usage may be a lot smaller. Yeah, but that's it. I think these are all, because of how nascent it is, we are, looking at, how the research community can actually, participate in this and perhaps develop and mature some of the sciences around us.

So that, that can actually lead to, perhaps more innovation down the road. I'm fully cognizant that AI being so hot now, a lot of people are also talking about, the kind of environmental impact about AI. So I would imagine that perhaps next year when we have a, when we meet again at Asia Tech X, perhaps we can then compare notes and see where we actually see the whole ecosystem heading towards.

Sanjay Podder: Absolutely. There's so much action happening on the custom silicon side as well, right? As you rightly pointed out, specific, specific chips for inferencing, for training...

Dr. Ong Chen Hui: even for data processing.

Sanjay Podder: yeah, this is going to be... you also spoke about the dark data problem and data itself, right? Because so much of data today is never used.

It's dark, but you're, you're still storing it. And I sometimes suspect, with, Gen AI, people will store it even more. So, there is just so much, you know, some of the challenges get amplified in the process. It's a year since you joined, I think, Green Software Foundation. How has the experience been?

Dr. Ong Chen Hui: I think it's been great. Certainly I think having that wider community that my team can actually tap on, bounce ideas and figure out what the, new wave of innovation is, I think has been very, very helpful. And it's something that we really want to be able to continue doing.

And we want to be able to bring, some of our other partners within government, within academia in together as well. Because I think in areas like this, where we all have a shared responsibility to protect the environment,, We really should tap on all the best ideas that are actually out there.

The second part, and I really want to congratulate you on this, is the, your ability to push for the SCI into, the standards. Actually on this, perhaps can I, tap on your brains a little bit on what sparked, the need for SCI and what do you want, for the standards next?

Sanjay Podder: I think when we, in fact, last week was our, third year of existence, like we announced Green Software Foundation in Microsoft Build 2021, Accenture, Microsoft, GitHub, ThoughtWorks, and a few of us, Goldman Sachs, we came together, we announced the Green Software Foundation. To be very candid, I didn't, I I think that we'll get this kind of response.

Today we have more than 60 members and some of the top companies from around the world, but right at the beginning we were very clear that this area is so new that there was absolutely no standard. There was no language to express the challenge. There was no training for people, right? And, and no organization, unless you're, of course, a government, but no organization can say that this is a standard.

You know, you have to have a consensus. And, to me, the whole idea about the foundation was to build those consensus, to have a platform to deliberate, to share the challenges, to find an answer to the problem. The software carbon intensity, I think, is an amazing way of expressing, in a very simple way, you know, what are the dimensions of a software that you need to look into when you want to measure the carbon intensity?

And this was like something that people were asking for, saying, how do I, how do I measure? How do I express? What is the language? The whole idea about embodied carbon is very important. People forget about it. People only think about the carbon emission during usage. But if you, I think, earlier you also pointed out e-procurement for example.

You know, the whole idea about looking at it holistically from the factor of embodied carbon so that you don't lose sight of because by the time a laptop comes to you, a bulk of its emission, lifetime emission has already happened during manufacturing state. So, you know, how do you look at it holistically?

Embodied carbon. Then things like, it's not a carbon offset discussion or a renewable energy discussion. It's about making software, inherently carbon efficient, which means looking into it. From a language stack, from architecture stack, the whole, you know, aspect of a software. So if you look at SCI, it brings in, for example, embodied carbon. It brings in, the carbon intensity of electricity. So that your software is more carbon aware, right? So the same software run in Singapore and run somewhere else, will have very different emission levels. And then, you know, per unit, what we call the R. So I think it's a very actionable way of expressing and what we therefore saw was rapid adoption of, SCI.

In fact, some, startups have started incorporating SCI. So we are SCI compliant. Large organizations are embracing SCI and, the best thing that happened was when we were blessed with, as an ISO standard. So SCI is now an ISO standard.

Dr. Ong Chen Hui: Yeah.

Sanjay Podder: Looking into the future, I think, SCI is just the right analytical approach to think about how do you model emissions from, LLMs and generative AI.

So that's going to be another area of, research. Exploration for us, how do we further build upon SCI to give a very actionable way of looking into emissions coming out of AI, both during training and inferencing. So I think it's one journey that we are super proud of. And all the members that came together to contribute and that's what we want to replicate, you know, creating more such, actionable deliverables from the Green Software Foundation for people to make this a reality, this space a reality, right?

So, so I agree with you. Congratulations to you as well as being a member of the GSF. It's something we all share and feel very proud about.

Dr. Ong Chen Hui: Yeah. Yeah, like I said, I think this is, certainly a course that IMDF is very, passionate about. And I guess, from the Green Software Foundation, it's certainly something that you have, been driving for the past three years, right? So beyond the SCI, right?

The Software Carbon Intensity, do you actually see a need to work together with regulators of the world in order to get this adopted? Or do you feel that perhaps there may be something else that may, that may be the next priority for Green Software Foundation?

Sanjay Podder: Yeah, I think there are a couple of things here. One is, as I mentioned sometime back at the start of the podcast, I think it's a culture change. Green software is a culture change. While the developers may want to do it, if there is no adequate support from the top, it is not possible to make your organization adopt green software in a very systematic fashion.

So one of the area, and the podcast is a part of that, is to. Spread this awareness among organizations, that, you know, they need to have this in their over digital sustainability and green software in their, in either in the net zero goal or the larger scheme of things, I do recall, you know, just after you joined Green Software Foundation, you created your digital sustainability policies and things like that.

I think that was great. So that, that to me is important. We obviously have to work, with the regulators by giving them inputs as and when we are called for as to what do we think about whether a greening of AI or what is possible so that, and an example would be that I am personally here, on, you know, invitation from IMDA to participate in Eurasia Tech.

Very important to be part of these conversations, understand how this space, is going to evolve. How can we, contribute to solve some of these challenges? Because we all know that, as an example, generative AI is here to stay, the adoption will only increase. What can we do? You know, we cannot just sit here and give a doomsday, you know, scenario.

We are here to solve the problem and say, "okay, so what can we do about the emissions? Is there a way to solve it? Is there a way to measure it? Are there best practices you can bring? Can we enable the ecosystem?" So I think, as I always say, we are the solution seekers, right? And to me, from a Green Software Foundation perspective, the members that we have, which is so diverse, not only governments, large organizations, nonprofits, academia, big businesses across industry.

That is our strength because we are getting that unique support to find solutions to these very difficult problems. So very excited. I think I would love to focus on green AI. That's what we are trying to do. Love to focus on how do we give frameworks and enable organizations to embrace green AI and transform themselves and green software and transform themselves.

So those are some of the... very recently we did the impact framework. Oh, yes. Again, the idea was. Very science based, complete transparency on how do you measure emissions. We did a carbon hack around the world. We saw immense participation from, you know, the developer community coming up with unique solutions.

So there is a lot of excitement in this space. And, that's what the Green Software Foundation will continue to champion with all the members' support. And look out for our GSF Summit. It's coming soon. In October, we will do in all major cities around the world, including in Asia, we are going to have, so we look forward to all your support to further champion this cause.

Dr. Ong Chen Hui: You mentioned about cultural change, right? And that certainly is also something that's very much top of the mind for us. When it comes to, cultural change, perhaps, let's exchange some notes around this. Do you find that it's more effective to have targeted conversations, let's say from Green Software Foundation to the C suite?

Or is it, more important to equip internal teams, right, with measurable, changes that are possible when they adopt green software or green AI practices.

Sanjay Podder: Yeah, no, I think it's a good question. And I think the answer is both. So if you look at our own journey in Green Software Foundation, we started first with. You know, actionable, measurable tools, practices that we want to empower the developer community. Very important. But then, you know, unless the organization embraces this as a priority, your, your sustainability priority is always competing with some other priority in the organization, which means that, you know, it will not receive the value or encouragement.

So it is very important that, Given that most big organizations, most organizations today have some kind of sustainability commitment, net zero or otherwise. How do we create, you know, in a very systematic fashion, that intervention right from the top? Because when there's a, you know, support coming from the top leadership, everything

Dr. Ong Chen Hui: of, yeah, everything falls in place, right. And all the innovation that you actually need, right. Yeah. Both from a internal processes point of view, as well as providing visibility to your supply chain partners. All that happens.

Sanjay Podder: All that happens, right? Even beyond, as you have rightly said, beyond the four walls of your organization, supply chain, everything, right? This is important. Climate change is real. This is important. And as you know, I look at it as a triangle, right? What I have seen is there is the whole thing of climate change, emissions, which appeal to people, people are concerned.

And then there is the whole energy crisis. So much energy. And the energy bills. And then finally, once you embrace green software practices, green AI practices, that show up in your bottom line. And you'll see, you know, at the heart of it, green software practices, green AI practices are green, are great software engineering practices.

Which for some reason we have forgotten, given the era of abundance we have been. Right, with the falling cost of compute, storage, nobody's, you know, people will store everything they have without even wondering, you know, how, what do I really need? So these are great practices when you bring all together.

You know, we find the answer to some of the pressing problems. So this has been a great conversation, Dr. Ong, you know, something that fits the very first podcast of the series. I hope some of the messages you gave today, you know, convey to other CXO leaders that how important this topic is and how you can make it a reality.

How you can champion it, and, every year I'm so delighted to see the Digital Sustainability Forum in Asia Tech, you know, takes a very prime spot, and that shows a commitment from the top, you know, and, and that's what we have to do in every organization so that digital sustainability, which is fast growing, especially green software, is one of the major sources of greenhouse gas emission.

We can control it right now rather than allowing it to snowball. So thank you so much for your time. Thank you for inviting me to Singapore. And as Green Software Foundation, we want to be a place of action, right? In this case, in Singapore, talk to the leaders, understand how we can collectively solve the problem.

So, super excited with this conversation. And, thanks for joining us in the CXO bytes Podcast. Thank you.

Dr. Ong Chen Hui: Thank you very much for having me. Thank you.

Sanjay Podder: Thank you.

Hey, everyone. Thanks for listening. Just a reminder to follow CXO Bytes on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And please do leave a rating and review if you like what we're doing. It helps other people discover the show. And of course, we want more listeners. To find out more about the Green Software Foundation, please visit greensoftware.foundation. Thanks again, and see you in the next episode.