Public cloud providers will be chosen based on their carbon emissions by 2025, claims Gartner

Sustainability will become a “top three criterion” in cloud purchase decisions within the next three years

Carbon emissions from hyperscalers will play a major role in cloud purchase decisions within the next three years, Gartner claims.

The analyst house claims that, by 2025, the sustainability of public cloud vendors will become a "top three criterion" to inform cloud purchase decisions by 2025.

More enterprises are prioritising their ESG goals, Gartner claims, with more than 90 per cent of organisations increasing their investments in sustainability programmes since the start of the pandemic compared to investments in 2017.

"Leading providers of cloud infrastructure and platform services are increasingly focusing on how they can disrupt higher-level business, compliance, societal and environmental issues," said Ed Anderson, distinguished research vice president at Gartner.

"Hyperscalers are aggressively investing in sustainable cloud operations and delivery, aspiring to eventually achieve net zero emissions within the decade, or sooner. Gartner expects increased availability of tools that help organisations calculate and reduce their carbon emissions through effective use of cloud services, like tools that assist in optimising cloud spending today."

The top 10 largest cloud providers by revenue account for 70 per cent of all IT spending on cloud infrastructure, platform and application services, Gartner claims.

The firm predicts that the world's leading cloud providers will lead the charge on sustainability.

"While essentially all cloud providers have sustainability initiatives in place, their progress in meeting carbon reduction goals and strategies for achieving net zero carbon emissions varies wildly," said Anderson. "Sustainability metrics and workload placement tools are still immature and not always transparent, making it difficult for organisations to fully and accurately assess true sustainability impacts of their cloud usage today.

"As stakeholders continue to push organisations to improve their sustainability posture, the more progressive providers will share their sustainability information publicly. Increasingly, stakeholder pressure will prompt them to include it in company disclosures, compliance and reporting."