Embracing Sustainability in Cloud Adoption

New Cloud Adoption Framework sustainability guidance boosts efficiency and cost savings

A cloud estate’s commitment to sustainability can help to guarantee long-term operational effectiveness, cost savings, and compliance with the increasingly stringent global environmental regulations.
Businesses can significantly reduce their environmental impact, future-proof their operations, and gain competitive advantages in an eco-aware market by aligning with sound sustainability practices.

The Azure Well-Architected Framework durability workload guidance, which we released in October 2022, will assist architects and developers in designing better, more efficient systems while keeping sustainability in mind.

Microsoft pleased to announce that the Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) has updated its sustainability guidance, which will assist executives, IT decision-makers, platform managers, IT operations, and other relevant roles in their sustainability journeys.

Discussing sustainability from beginning to end

The Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) offers organizations a thorough, end-to-end strategy for implementing and managing cloud technologies, ensuring that their cloud journey is smooth and effective.

The CAF acts as a constant guide, enabling organizations to revisit and reassess their strategies, plans, and implementations as they continue to change and adapt to new technologies and business needs. Because iterative development ensures continuous improvement and alignment with business goals, CAF is an essential tool for organizations as they migrate to the cloud.

The need for environmentally friendly cloud environments and green software is expanding, and CAF is essential in assisting businesses in embracing environmentally friendly practices and aligning with sustainability objectives.

Framework for Cloud Adoption Strategy

Customers are increasingly considering how the cloud can help them achieve their environmental objectives because it can cut down on resource use and carbon emissions. By switching to the cloud from on-premises data centers, carbon emissions can be cut by up to 98 percent. It is helpful to define cloud strategies that take sustainability outcomes and business benefits into account in order to achieve long-term sustainability goals.

• Establish goals for the teams responsible for sustainability and create green teams.
• Brand sustainability for your business
• Suggestions for regulating compliance
• Assistance with comprehending your current emissions
• Receive direction on suggested tools and resources.
• View examples of sustainable results

See Sustainability outcomes and benefits for business – Cloud Adoption Framework for more information.

Plan

If you want to get a head start on reducing environmental impact, demonstrate Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) commitment, and comply with regulations more quickly, you must prioritize sustainability in your cloud and business planning.

Examining this section in depth enables you to appreciate the significance of:

• Calculating your current emissions as you make future plans.
• Create clear roles and responsibilities and a RACI (Responsibility, Accountability, Consulted, and Informed) framework.
• The ability to create a community for sustainability and to explore learning resources
• Specifying reporting requirements and giving some thought to risk management

For more information, go to Planning for cloud adoption while taking sustainability into account – Cloud Adoption Framework.

Govern

The advice enables you to establish sustainability and cloud efficiency standards that can cut costs and meet compliance requirements.

You can configure how specific features of your Azure estate should be restricted and used with the right policy control. Governance for sustainability doesn’t have to be complicated to implement.

Here are some sample policies that show how to advance sustainability, reap financial rewards, and direct sustainability discussions within your company.

• Deploy to low-carbon areas to assist your company in achieving sustainability objectives, cutting carbon emissions, and saving money.
• To reduce the carbon footprint, schedule workloads to run during low-carbon periods.
• To prevent over-provisioning, limit service tiers with policies that only permit the deployment of specific SKUs.
• Monitoring workload usage and alerting owners and stakeholders can help raise awareness of overconsumption and unneeded carbon emissions.

For more information, go to Cloud Adoption Framework’s article on Sustainability considerations in your cloud governance strategy.

Manage

Achieving sustainability alignment in cloud management and operations can help your teams become more environmentally conscious and ultimately contribute to the accomplishment of your sustainability objectives.

The advice in this section aids in your understanding of things like:

• Keeping track of carbon emissions
• Using the price as a substitute for sustainability
• Locating occasions to schedule workloads
• Keep an eye out for retiring services
• Erasing obsolete data
• Utilize the Emissions Impact Dashboard to gain sustainability insights.
• Get to know demand shaping

Visit Cloud Adoption Framework’s Sustainability considerations in Cloud Management for more information.

Steps for Microsoft’s sustainability program

Utilize these additional learning resources to continue your sustainability journey.

A set of guidelines and best practices for designing workloads on Azure with pertinent considerations for sustainability and cloud efficiency can be found in the Microsoft Well-Architected Framework Sustainability Workload Guidance.

For organizations of all sustainability levels, Microsoft Sustainability Manager provides a scalable solution that centralizes data analytics for seamless, integrated, and automated sustainability management. It streamlines manual tasks, enabling effective emissions, water, or waste impact recording, reporting, and mitigation.

Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability offers a set of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) capabilities that assist organizations in accelerating sustainability progress and business growth.

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