From SLAs to DLAs - will 'decarbonisation level agreements' catch on?

Atos hopes to generate €500m in net new revenues from DLAs and its wider Net Zero Transformation practice by 2025, its head of decarbonisation Nourdine Bihmane tells CRN

The IT services industry may be built on service level agreements (SLAs), but with customers under increasing pressure to cut their carbon footprints will we see the rise of the DLA - or decarbonisation level agreements?

That's the question we put to Nourdine Bihmane, head of decarbonisation at IT services giant Atos.

Atos is pioneering the concept of DLAs as part of its ambitious plans to reach net zero by 2028.

The IT services behemoth hopes to generate €500m in net new revenues from DLAs and its wider ‘Net Zero Transformation' practice by 2025, Bihmane told CRN.

"When we say 'net zero', it's really not only encompassing our own carbon emissions, but also the carbon emissions from what we are buying and what we are selling. And when we talk about what we are selling we talk about our services to the customer, and this is how the idea of a DLA comes int play," Bihmane explained.

‘Scope 1' and ‘scope 2' emissions typically make up just ten per cent of an IT services provider's footprint, he stressed. Reducing the remaining ‘scope 3' emissions that lie outside a company's direct control is a much more complicated process, he admitted.

Bihmane also talked about how Atos is using quantum computing technology in trials aimed at capturing CO2 molecules that have already been emitted.

"Once we industry catch up on reducing the carbon emission, we really need everybody to focus how we could capture what we already put in," he said.

Under its DLAs, Atos will buy carbon credit certificates for customers in the event they fail to meet carbon reduction targets set out in the agreements, Bihmane said.

"Let's pick for example digital workplace services, where we are targeting more or less between a 20 and 25 per cent reduction. Every year a third party measures where we stand on reducing the carbon emission, and by the end of the contract either we achieve our ambition or we don't, and whatever the gap is we will create, or buy, a carbon credit certificate and give it to the customer," he explained.

"It's binding, it's measurable, and it's audited."

Bihmane said he hoped that DLAs catch on in the industry.

"Even being the first one in the industry [dong this], I hope the other players commit. We need people to commit and we need people to execute."