Sustainability of hybrid clouds to be a hot topic by 2026

Half of organisations will adopt sustainability-enabled monitoring to manage the energy consumption metrics for their hybrid cloud environments by 2026, Gartner has predicted.

The research firm believes that pressure from investors, customers, regulators and governments will force organisations to adopt carbon neutrality and net zero goals. As a result, the company expects the reporting of activities, energy usage, water efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions to become new areas of IT management.

Gartner VP Analyst Padraig Byrne said organisations are increasingly expecting their infrastructure and operations teams to launch sustainability initiatives that align their current IT carbon footprint with corporate sustainability goals.

“I&O leaders and managed service providers will demand monitoring, analytical and generative AI services from software and cloud vendors to manage and optimise CO₂e emissions and power consumption for reporting and IT management purposes,” he said. “Most relevant metrics aligned to net zero carbon are based on CO₂e emissions and power consumption. However, IT organisations don’t currently have the capability to gather this information directly. Some request it from their IT providers, but the quality and granularity of information at the data centre and cloud account level aren’t accurate enough to rely on for good management decisions.”

But current monitoring tools that address such sustainability metrics are focused on on-premises environments, which makes it challenging to address these goals in current hybrid IT environments, according to Gartner analysts.

To address these challenges, Gartner is recommending that organisations adopt ‘GreenOps’, sustainability practices to start building the operating model that will help achieve carbon-neutral goals.

“This may not need to be acted on as urgently now, but treating those signals with equal importance positions organisations to benefit from real-time GHG emissions and power consumption optimisation when the capability becomes available,” Byrne said.

Image credit: iStock.com/imaginima