Emilio Tenuta, VP of Corporate Sustainability at Ecolab, discusses the company's work with Microsoft on water management. A data center in San Antonio used their Water Risk Monetizer tool to avoid 54 million gallons of fresh water through reuse and recycling. Ecolab just launched version 3 of the tool, which now includes water-quality data.
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Hi, I'm Angela Godwin, chief editor of Waterworld at Industrial Waterworld magazines, coming to you from the BlueTech forum here in Dublin, Ireland. Joining me today is Emilio Tenuta. He is with Ecolab. Emilio, thank you so much for joining us.
You're welcome.
Appreciate it. You are going to be giving a keynote at the conference this year and you're going to be talking a little bit about IOT and sort of tying that together with an interesting case study. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Sure. So we are partnering and working together with Microsoft around the ability to really think differently about the way water is managed by leveraging data. And there's a couple facts that we're really going to bring forth. One is that the way water is being managed today is becoming harder and more complex and more expensive to access clean, available water. Second is that we're seeing awareness on the corporate side where more and more companies are starting to see how material water is to their business. And then third, more than ever today, there is opportunities to really analyze, monitor information in industry that allows us to really make decisions, to take action. And so today we're going to highlight a case study at a San Antonio data center for Microsoft where we actually leverage all of those factors. Number one, Microsoft's corporate leadership when it comes to water as part of their platform, along with energy. Second is ability to look at how material water is to their business. So when it comes to data centers, obviously the cloud, we're leveraging the cloud in everything we do every day. Well, with water management, that's no different. And so we've been able to look at water and water risks at that data center, begin to factor value, the full value of water using the water risk monetizer, and then actually inform decisions to take action. In this case, a solution that allows them to really manage, reuse and recycle water to avoid 54 million gallons of water, fresh water used at that facility from the local area.
That's incredible. Now, you mentioned the water risk monetizer and we talked about that in a prior interview. Does this venture with Microsoft, does that have impact on the monetizer itself?
Yes, in fact, on World Water Day, so in March of this year, we launched version three of the next generation where we're including water quality. Now, the tool we partnered with Microsoft and true cost, and both of them had a unique part in the partnership, the fact that the waterus monetizer is being run on the Azure cloud technology, which is Microsoft's technology platform. And then true cost. We partnered with them and have partnered with them since 2014 when we launched the original tool. And so. So we're excited about this because now we're really completing the picture of quantity, availability and quality in this current version.
That's excellent. Now, before I let you go, I do want to ask you a little bit about this conference and conferences like these. What do you think they bring to the marketplace? Why are they important?
Wow. I think it's great for building awareness around the issue of water scarcity and it continues to change and evolve. As I mentioned, I say that this conference specifically has done a really great job in the two years that I've been coming to it to really move away from the big presentations, general session presentations, where we begin to have roundtables here and begin to get the interaction. And in many cases, these roundtables allow you to have interaction with a number of different topics. And so I call it speed dating. And it gives us an opportunity to really interact with the group of excellent experts that we have assembled here. So I really tip my hat to bluetech and Paul for doing this.
Excellent. Yeah, it's been a fantastic conference so far this year and I know we have much more of them to look forward to. So we wish you all the best of luck going forward and good luck with your keynote this afternoon. Thanks for taking time to talk with us today. We appreciate it.
Thanks for having me.
For Waterworld and Industrial Water World magazine, I'm Angela Godwin.
