Gartner®: Build an Environmental Cloud Sustainability Strategy
“Organizations determined to reduce their environmental impact must focus on the sustainability of their IT initiatives. This research helps I&O leaders build a comprehensive environmental sustainability strategy by highlighting the criteria to evaluate cloud providers’ effectiveness and abilities.”
According to the the Gartner® report here are the key findings:
Key Findings
- Transparency from cloud service providers regarding efforts to reduce their environmental impact is a key indicator of commitment to their sustainability goals.
- The hyperscale cloud service providers are leading the IT industry on environmental sustainability and running their facilities with world-class energy effectiveness and carbon-neutral operations due to growing customer demand, public reputation, investor attraction, energy costs and regulatory policies.
- Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are categorized in three scopes. Scope 3 is the most difficult for providers to control and often accounts for up to half of their total emissions, which impact cloud service providers adopting different decarbonization strategies and carbon offset.”
I&O leaders focused on cloud and edge infrastructure should
- Gain visibility into providers’ sustainability goals by inquiring how they will reduce their environmental impact during the partnership period and advise enterprises on the impact of services they consume.
- Confirm which energy optimization, renewable energy and circular economy initiatives cloud providers are implementing by requesting targets and related metrics, environmental certifications, and energy efficiency roadmaps.
- Evaluate providers’ emission-reduction efforts by reviewing Scope 3 emissions over the past five years. Identify which are meeting decarbonization targets through carbon offsets versus business changes, optimization of processes and innovation.”
Gartner,Build an Environmental Cloud Sustainability Strategy,Miguel Angel Borrega, Tiny Haynes, Simon Mingay, Autumn Stanish,17 June 2022.
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