Building A Sustainable Cloud Strategy 

In Gartner’s 2023 CEO survey, environmental sustainability remains among the top 10 business priorities. As cloud computing accounts for a significant portion of organizations’ carbon emissions, driving efficiency in data centers and cloud infrastructure can be an effective way to reduce their environmental impact. 

Gartner predicts 70% of organizations pursuing sustainability initiatives will leverage public cloud services to achieve environmental sustainability outcomes by 2026. Despite this, only a few currently include environmental benefits as a top priority when selecting a cloud service provider. 

Infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders may also have difficulty choosing a cloud provider that will help them achieve sustainability goals since not all providers possess the same level of sustainability maturity. Gartner has found most organizations’ timelines to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are no earlier than 2030, yet cloud contracts are typically around three years. Shifting between cloud service providers is long, complex, and costly – and therefore unlikely. 

When evaluating cloud providers, enterprises must consider the material sustainability performance issues now and undertake a careful analysis of providers’ current environmental sustainability efforts and roadmap. 

Factors To Consider 

Before engaging with any cloud service provider, I&O leaders must understand their own organization’s sustainability objectives, targets, and timelines. This will help identify providers aligned with their goals and recognize opportunities to help achieve them. 

Cloud service providers need to be asked how, and by how much, they will reduce emissions associated with cloud services consumed during the contract period. Transparency is a key indicator of commitment to sustainability goals, so a provider’s reluctance to provide this information should be considered a warning sign. 

Another key consideration is to be wary of a one-off showcase datacentre being presented as representative of normal practice. Instead, ask the provider about the data centers specific to the regions where cloud services are being consumed. 

Consider the certifications these data centers hold and their certification roadmap. Third-party energy efficiency certifications can demonstrate a cloud provider’s level of basic capability and commitment to its sustainability goals. 

Other factors to consider are the power usage effectiveness (PUE) of air conditioning and power distribution infrastructure; the water usage effectiveness (WUE) in cooling datacentres; and the circularity practices for waste reduction. Find out what percentage of energy consumed relevant to the organization’s consumption of cloud services comes from renewable resources. 

Public cloud regions powered by renewable energy can reduce GHG emissions by 70% to 90%, compared to traditional legacy data centers powered by fossil fuel energy. 

Hyperscalers are some of the biggest consumers of renewable energy in the world, so ask them about their short, medium, and long-term targets for renewable energy consumption specific to the regions where the cloud services are being consumed. The same is true for understanding how cloud service providers report and manage GHG emissions. 

Why Is This Important? 

Gartner predicts CEOs will not merely respond to customer, investor, and regulator demands, but will seize on sustainability as a transformational change catalyst to yield productivity improvement through waste reduction, product innovation, climate adaptation, and employee and customer engagement. 

Avoid getting caught up in a provider’s “headline-grabbing” net-zero or carbon-neutral targets and renewable energy numbers. Instead, focus on the merits of their sustainability credentials – efforts that materially reduce GHG emissions, increase energy efficiency and asset utilization, and add net new renewable energy capacity.  

By Autumn Stanish