26.06.2023 | Blog

Courageous Sustainability: 3 Highlights from our Sustainability Journey in 2022

Taking the first steps in almost any ambition requires courage. That applied even to writing this blog, albeit it not being my first piece of writing. At first, I had a blank document in front of me and a few flimsy ideas. Nevertheless, after sparring with a colleague about the topic of the blog I had built some courage and taken my first step toward composing this text. And before I knew it, I had generated a list of topics for discussion, which turned into a draft and later a final version. 

In a similar manner, the journey toward sustainability requires courage. We like to say that we started our Sustainability Journey a few years back when we started developing strategy and goals, both short- and long-term, for sustainability. Taking the first steps on this journey was exciting, but also slightly intimidating. Thoughts about wanting to find the best and brightest solutions immediately in the beginning and worrying about not meeting the standards of different stakeholders were present.  

Today, I am filled with pride as I look at all the accomplishments of 2022 summarized in our Sustainability Report for the year. The first steps we took quite a while back have transformed into a journey in which we take new steps daily. I have listed 3 exciting steps we took in 2022, which can be embraced by any company here: 

1. Our Sustainability Day 

• In May of 2022, we held our first Sustainability Day on which we introduced new policies relating to sustainability and had some related activities to foster conversations and innovations related to sustainability.  
• The aim was to raise awareness of our sustainability program and our achievements and challenges. We reached this goal and as a result, decided to make the day an annual tradition for Evitec. 

2. Sustainable Industry Solutions 

• In 2022, we started a couple of projects which dive into analyzing the sustainability of our industry, which for us means the fintech business.  
• Firstly, we began investigating Green Coding with the aim of finding better ways of developing products and solutions which are as efficient as possible.  
• Secondly, we also launched a Sustainable Digitalization project. This project aims to study the meaning of sustainable digitalization to ensure that our products and solutions work as drivers for a smarter, stronger, and more sustainable tomorrow. 

3. EcoVadis Rating 

• Already in 2021, we decided to make annual EcoVadis assessments to have an external party analyze our sustainability efforts and suggest areas of improvement. Based on our 2022 review, we earned an EcoVadis Bronze Batch for our sustainability efforts as our overall ranking exceeded industry averages. We also received a list of suggestions for new developments, which we are excited to work on. 

More about these topics and others can be found in our Sustainability Report for 2022.  

For any company or anyone else for that matter, struggling with taking the first step toward sustainability, the news is good. In just a few years we have developed a sustainability program, which involves all our stakeholders and have embarked on our sustainability journey, which takes us toward a brighter tomorrow step by step each day. All that is required is the courage to take the first step. Next steps will follow. 

20.06.2023 | Featured News

Evitec publishes Sustainability Report 2022

Evitec’s Sustainability Report of 2022 is now published. The report includes statements of commitment from our CSO, CEO, and Chairman of the Board, reflection on our Sustainability Values, our EcoVadis score and action plan, and details about our Sustainability Journey from the time period of 2022.

As the world around us turns and evolves, we strive to be a part of the positive change, or the Sustainability Revolution, as we like to refer to it. Our Sustainability Report serves as a testament to us constantly working toward a smarter, stronger, and more sustainable tomorrow.

As our CEO, Mikko Pilkama, states in his commitment letter:

— There is no better moment than this to start building a more sustainable, and a more prosperous world for all of us.

Read more about our sustainability work and motivation in the newly published report.

05.06.2023 | Blog Featured Insights Technology

Painting the future with Microsoft Fabric – data landscape in one frame

The data world is abuzz with excitement as Microsoft launched into public a preview of its latest offering, Microsoft Fabric. This so-called all-in-one analytics solution has generated significant market hype across the data community, promising to revolutionize and simplify the data & analytics infrastructures and bring the “data into the era of AI”. What does this all mean in practice? Take a minute and let us tell you what the Fabric is all about.

Microsoft Fabric is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution wrapping all the different components of data landscape together under one package. With one licence you get it all what you need for your data environment: Data Factory, Synapse, Power BI and OneLake. You don’t need to buy the different resources separately anymore; it is all included into a single service and managed and governed centrally.

OneLake = centralized data storage for all your analytics data

OneLake is the other of the most remarkable features of the Fabric, as it aims to mitigate the need of data duplication within the whole solution. You, who have been working with data infrastructures, probably know that it is common that the data needs to be duplicated across the data solution’s layers for different analytical engines to support the different use cases of the data. In OneLake the data is stored in compressed parquet-format, and all the different analytical engines within the Fabric can query the same data efficiently.

To put this in context, both T-SQL engine for building a data warehouse and Analysis Service Engine for Power BI reports can use the same data as efficiently. Microsoft promises to extend this “One copy of data“ -paradigm further by enabling shortcuts for the data, so that different teams can use the same data for their specific purposes by creating virtual data products. In addition, OneLake offers a possibility to expand the lake into some third-party data storages, such as Amazon S3, without a need to move the data physically to the OneLake. Quite impressive.

Introducing AI to empower developers

The other remarkable feature of Fabric is the inclusion of the AI within the Fabric across the solution. This means introducing Copilot into all building blocks of the Fabric to assist you in your work to increase your efficiency. For example, in the future you can ask Copilot to build a HR report for you in Power BI. Interesting to see how well this feature is going to work. With Copilot Microsoft aims to empower the citizen developers to be more integral part of the data development process and thus promote the organizations to become even more data driven. Most of the Copilot features are still in Private Preview though, so we all must wait a bit longer to get our hands on these cool new features.

More sustainable tomorrow through innovation in resource efficiency

At Evitec, we have already begun exploring the capabilities that Microsoft Fabric offers. Our own OneLake is already up and running, and we are well in our way to uncover the possibilities of Fabric. While the service is still in preview mode, and some child-diseases are expected, many of the features seem promising. We truly are impressed by its ability to eliminate the need for data duplication.

As the volume of data continues to grow in the world, so does the carbon footprint of the data storage. And as we are thriving towards more sustainable tomorrow, it is important that also the data solutions are designed to be as resource efficient as possible, and here Fabric seems to make a clear difference by having the only one copy of the data. Given of course that the processing of the data does not lose the benefits gained by reduction of the storage.

Time will tell whether Fabric can claim all the promises Microsoft has made for it, but if it does, we think that Fabric is a real game changer in the data field. Join us to the journey to unravel the potential of your data with Microsoft Fabric!

03.05.2023 | Featured News

Evitec joins United Nations Global Compact

Evitec has been accepted to join the United Nations Global Compact (later UN GC).

By being a UN GC participant, we commit to acting responsibly and aligning our strategies and operations with the UN’s  Ten Principles  on human rights, labour, environment  and  anti-corruption. Additionally, we commit to striving towards reaching the  UN Sustainable Development Goals.

UN GC is the world’s largest sustainability compact  and has over 21,000 participants ranging from companies to other organizations to countries. The UN GC accepts commitments from companies which act responsibly towards people and the planet. In the application process we committed to setting ambitious goals and reporting on our progress annually.

The aim of the UN GC is to  mobilize a global movement of sustainable companies and stakeholders to create a more equal, transparent, and prosperous world, while caring for the environment.

Our aim at Evitec is to modernise Nordic banks and insurance companies through automation, agile methods, analytics, and cloud computing. We believe that this modernisation will lead the way to a sustainable future.

Read more about our sustainability work.

See our profile at the United Nations Global Compact portal.

29.03.2023 | Blog Featured Insights

Why is sustainability on the agenda of an IT Company?

Not long ago, I was having dinner with some friends, one working in the energy industry, other in banking. At some point the discussion turned to sustainability and environmental issues and one of my friends commented “Well, working for an IT-company, you don’t need to deal with these topics at work”. What? No – so wrong!

The whole perception of not all industries and companies needing to get involved in sustainability is wrong. Sure enough, when working in energy production or with sustainable financing, the scope of how much difference you can make, might be different. But then promoting sustainability isn’t a question of how much or little you can contribute with. Every action counts.

Development to ensure peace and prosperity for people and the planet

It’s a common misconception that sustainability is only about environment and global warming. This is righteously the largest challenge, and as the latest climate change report from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlights, there is much to do and not that much time. But, as the abbreviation ESG, environmental, social and governance, implies, sustainability does involve more and incorporates a profound human aspect.

Living in one of the most equal societies, with a strong labour legislation, we easily neglect topics like diversity and equity. Therefore, having documented policies like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and Sustainable Procurement are important, as they clearly state the company’s standpoint to the subject, what employees can expect from the employer and on the other hand, what is expected of employees.

Coming back to environment, also in software and consultancy industry we do have numerous possibilities to promote environmental aspects. There are big ticket items, like Green Coding, by which we can directly impact on how much energy the code we develop uses. And there are small ticket items, like paying attention to energy consumption in our office and business travelling, exploring possibilities to extend the lifetime of the equipment we use and making sure we have recycling procedures in place.

Work in progress

Something I think we all can agree upon, sustainability is far from ready, we still have plenty of work ahead of us. Promoting sustainability is complex and manifolded. For the environmental aspect, the Paris Agreement sets a tough goal. And when sustainability is also surrounded by controversy, like greenwashing and questionable CO2 calculations, it will require long-term commitment from companies to scrupulously strive for genuine and credible sustainability.

During the past 1 ½ years I’ve had the pleasure of working part-time in our Sustainability team. This has been rewarding both as the topic is of personal interest for me, but also as it has been even more educating than I expected. It’s remarkable how a topic starts to evolve and grow when it’s a regular discussion point. The more my colleagues talk about the topic, the more new and interesting views and facts are brought to the table.

Looking back at our work so far, it was with great pride I could tell my friends that sustainability indeed is on the agenda of our company and something we daily work on.