Elizabeth Hackenson, TechRadar.com, January 12, 2024
Do you know the carbon footprint of your IT infrastructure and operations? It’s a question increasingly being asked of CIOs and digital decision-makers as companies examine the true impact of their operations upon the planet.
But today, less than half of business leaders are aware of the carbon footprint of their end-to-end IT landscape, from end-user devices to the cloud. Even fewer – 18% – have a mature and comprehensive strategy to reduce it.
Here’s why IT is the next frontier in decarbonization, and the steps that companies need to take to accelerate its efficiency as we all face critical climate change goals.
Data’s carbon footprint is bigger than we imagine
Every major business in the world talks about driving digital acceleration by adopting new technologies. However, this can imply a growth of their businesses’ carbon footprint because of the increased energy consumption of IT resources, devices, tools, and platforms. But how does this translate into figures? The number of connected devices is expected to reach 55.7 billion by 2025, of which 75% will be connected to an IoT platform. The data generated by those devices is expected to be 73.1 zettabytes in just two years’ time. This growth in data volumes will also lead to growing adoption of technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, which is the key to drawing value from massive stores of data.
