In a conversation with Google Cloud, one of the topics discussed was that the business case for moving to the cloud is changing. While organizations are still looking at digitization, flexibility and scalability, and minimizing disruption as key reasons for moving to the cloud, there is increased interest in sustainability as a major part of the business case for moving to the cloud. A recent SAP article discussed the same topic specifically focusing on how their own cloud strategy is focused on green data centers. What does this shift mean? And is it important to you as a cloud user?

Achieving Cloud Sustainability

For many organizations the move to the cloud is simply about replacing aging or outdated infrastructure. But more recently, the cloud data centers themselves are playing a bigger role in the decisions that are being made. Part of this is whether the data center itself is sustainable, but what is just as important is how the move to the cloud can help organizations meet their own sustainability goals. There are multiple ways that this sustainability can be achieved. SAP have ensured that their data centers have been certified according to the ISO 14001 standard. This ensures that the data centers are managed in an environmentally conscious way. In addition, environmental performance must be monitored, and there must be continuous improvement on environmental impact. SAP is not the only cloud provider that functions in this way. SAP also ensures that the hyperscalers that they work with provide carbon neutral data centers regardless of the overall sustainability that is in use by the provider. This not only provides an overall benefit from a sustainability standpoint but can help SAP customers with making their overall value chain more sustainable. Supporting the overall value chain is an important part of meeting customer requirements today. According to Dinesh Vandayar at Google Cloud, “When an organization sells an item, their customer wants to understand and track how the commodity was sourced.” This is a need for many organizations looking to meet new and changing customer expectations and must be met to remain competitive. SAP talks about how organizations that are becoming more digital are also becoming more sustainable, something that they have seen in research into the correlation between digital maturity and business performance. Organizations that have a higher digital maturity also tended to have better sustainability performance. While not every organization may have reached digital maturity today, the process of digital transformation is still only partly complete for much of the enterprise market, improving how green systems and infrastructure are produces both financial as well as sustainability benefits. This all connects with how important it is to build your business case for the cloud based on how that environment can be leveraged for long-term innovation, not only current infrastructure needs. There should also be a focus on how your organization’s primary asset, that of data, is in the best place to be leveraged to provide the most value.

What Does This Mean for SAPinsiders?

Organizations face continued challenges around how to remain competitive while meeting broader goals around value chain and overall sustainability. Steps that organizations can take to address this include:

• Ensure that any new infrastructure investments or plans consider how new infrastructure can play into sustainability objectives.
• Consider how hosting partners or cloud providers perform from a sustainability perspective in addition to the other benefits offered. While not every organization needs to meet sustainability goals across the value chain, ensuring that information is available may be required in the future.
• Determine how much innovation your cloud provider can help you drive beyond infrastructure. All the hyperscalers offer solutions that help organizations leverage their investment in the cloud, and these can be used to facilitate greater innovation beyond infrastructure change.