NTT DATA's Company-wide Drive Toward the Future of AI and Sustainability

Harnessing the Power of Technology for a Better Future

Backed by many years of experience in IT, NTT DATA has adopted the vision of becoming an "AI Driven Company." To further strengthen the sustainability management it has long pursued, the company is placing even greater emphasis on initiatives that position sustainability at the core of management, including the upgrade of its Sustainability Management Promotion Department to the Sustainability Management Promotion Headquarters in July 2025. As one of the world's leading IT services companies, with significant influence on both business and society, NTT DATA's efforts are attracting close attention. What policies underpin these initiatives, and what strategies are being put into action?

Balancing Business Opportunities and Social Value Through Three Strategic Frameworks

While advances in IT drive business growth, they also create major sustainability challenges. One of the most pressing is rising electricity consumption, along with the associated increase in CO₂ emissions. Tomoki Yamane of the NTT DATA Group points out:
"Electricity consumption had already been increasing gradually, but the recent use of generative AI has accelerated that growth even further."

Tomoki Yamane
Head of Sustainability Business Office,Sustainability Innovation Headquarters,NTT DATA Group Corporation

Guided by its mission to "accelerate client success and positively impact society through responsible innovation," NTT DATA is one of the world's leading IT services companies and the world's third-largest data center operator.(*) For a company of this scale, achieving a sustainable society through the use of IT carries major significance.

"As IT has now become an indispensable part of society's infrastructure, we have a social responsibility as a company that has led the IT business for more than 40 years," says Yamane. "We must curb the negative aspects of IT and AI while continuing to pursue the creation of positive value."

The company's strategic framework for sustainability management is what it calls "Quality Growth with 3 Positives." Under this approach, the company pursues Quality Growth (growth defined not only by scale, but by quality) while seeking to realize three positives simultaneously: Planet Positive for the environment, Prosperity Positive for the economy, and People Positive for society.

(*) Based on Structure Research (July 2024), compiled by NTT DATA. Excludes Chinese operators and includes certain assets held by NTT.

What Are the 3 Positives?

"We do not view sustainability as something separate from our business, but as an integral part of it. Our aim is to realize the three positives as business opportunities in a trade-on relationship. What is particularly important is that we also focus on the environment (Planet) and society (People), where negative aspects, or trade-offs, can sometimes arise," Yamane explains.

Another major factor is that, as a data center operator, the company has the capabilities to take the initiative in these efforts. It has full-stack capabilities spanning software, servers, and cloud services, as well as data centers and networks. By incorporating sustainability into all of these areas, it can generate a significant overall impact.

"By mobilizing our full capabilities as an operator supporting social infrastructure to advance sustainability, we can maximize the value we provide to our clients and, in turn, contribute to the sustainable growth of society as a whole," says Yamane.

Addressing Challenges Through AI and Reducing AI's Environmental Impact

Initiatives related to generative AI, which have attracted particular attention in recent years, occupy an important place within the company's sustainability efforts. "AI plays a central role in realizing Quality Growth with 3 Positives," says Yamane. It is not enough simply to create value and improve productivity through AI. Companies must also curb its negative impact on the environment and establish AI governance from an ethical perspective.

To this end, NTT DATA has set out two frameworks for advancing SustAInability (= AI × Sustainability). One is Sustainability of AI, which focuses on reducing the environmental impact associated with the use of AI. The other is AI for Sustainability, which involves leveraging AI to solve social issues and enhance sustainability. This can also be seen as an evolution of the idea of IT as a driver of green innovation.

NTT DATA's Approach to AI

"Unless we take action, electricity consumption will continue to grow exponentially. It is an urgent priority both to reduce the power consumed by AI itself and to use AI to improve energy efficiency. This is especially important in Japan, where a declining birthrate and aging population are causing labor shortages and a reduction in skilled workers," Yamane points out. Naturally, this also requires an approach from a global perspective.

Innovation driven by IOWN, the optical technology developed by the NTT Group, has already delivered results in some areas, but it will still take time to achieve full-scale deployment and meaningful impact. For that reason, it is necessary to pursue medium- to long-term innovation while simultaneously rolling out measures that can deliver results in the short term. "We will sort out what can and cannot be done, and address the issue from both the standpoint of vision and reality," says Yamane.

As a practical response, the company is focusing on two areas: Next-Gen Infrastructure and AI-empowered New Value & Productivity. The former involves combining network and cloud technologies as a data center service provider to deliver next-generation infrastructure services that leverage the full strength of the NTT DATA Group. The latter involves using AI to redesign clients' business processes in order to create new value and achieve dramatic gains in productivity. To realize Quality Growth with 3 Positives, NTT DATA is incorporating a sustainability perspective into both of these priority areas.

"Our strength lies in our ability to leverage our full-stack capabilities to optimize infrastructure across the board," Yamane emphasizes. "In addition to improving equipment efficiency, we are reducing environmental impact through the use of renewable energy and by shifting workloads geographically and temporally." The company is also advancing decentralization initiatives in regional areas, including the installation of container-type data centers in locations where renewable energy is available.

Next-Gen Infrastructure Initiatives

At present, the use of AI remains limited to individual tasks and partial efficiency improvements, and has yet to deliver business impact at sufficient scale. NTT DATA therefore aims to fundamentally transform productivity and create new value by rebuilding existing business processes themselves on the premise of AI.

"Drawing on the industry and operational knowledge we have built up over many years, we select the most suitable AI and take full responsibility for its implementation," says Yamane. "We then turn the insights gained through that process into recommendations for the industry, and feed the results back to our clients and to society."

Initiatives under AI-empowered New Value & Productivity

Green Software Driving Responsible Innovation

The Green Software Foundation (GSF) was established in May 2021 to promote the greening of the IT industry, with software as a starting point. The NTT DATA Group has been involved since its inception, and in January 2025, Gadhu Sundaram of NTT DATA UK was appointed as chairperson. Gadhu has spent 32 years in the software industry, including 26 years at NTT DATA. Over the past five years, he has focused on exploring the relationship between technology and sustainability.

"We have promoted green software because we want to lead sustainable practices in software development - not only for our own business, but also for our clients and the industry as a whole," Gadhu explains.

More recently, he contributed to a white paper titled "Sustainable AI for Greener Tomorrow," which addresses growing concerns around AI from an environmental perspective.
"The IT industry is leveraging AI to create a wide range of services, but it must also limit its impact on society in line with its mission of responsible innovation. This paper explains what is needed to reduce environmental impact, and it has garnered broad support," he adds.

NTT DATA UK
Vice President of Application Services
Gadhu Sundaram and the cover of Sustainable AI for Greener Tomorrow

In addition, the GSF's standards for assessing CO₂ emissions are being considered for incorporation into the UK government's procurement standards. "The Government Buying Standards (GBS) for Software, which are under public consultation, recommends the use of the Software Carbon Intensity standard for measuring the energy consumption of the software services being procured. These standards are expected to become a basis for future purchasing decisions," Gadhu explains.
As the issue of CO₂ emissions comes to the fore, the adoption of green software procurement standards to enhance sustainability is expected to spread, particularly in Europe. Against this backdrop, NTT DATA has set ambitious carbon-neutrality targets of its own.

One such goal is NTT DATA's Net Zero Vision, which aims to achieve net zero emissions, including Scope 3, by 2040 - ten years ahead of the widely cited 2050 target. Explaining the rationale, Yamane says, "As a provider of social infrastructure, we believe it is essential to achieve carbon neutrality ahead of others." As part of this journey, NTT DATA has set a milestone of achieving net zero emissions for its data center business - its most environmentally impactful operation - by 2030. The goal is to realize business growth and environmental responsibility together as "trade-on," rather than treating them as a trade-off.

By leveraging its comprehensive capabilities to deliver full-stack solutions - from infrastructure to software - from a sustainability perspective, NTT DATA aims to create meaningful impact for its clients and for society as a whole.