Green is usually the motivation behind cloud transformation, but that green is financial, not environmental. However, going digital is an opportunity for companies to not only reduce their legacy overload but cut their carbon footprint as well.

“It’s about responsible innovation,” said Kishore Durg (pictured), senior managing director and Cloud First global services lead at Accenture plc. “[Companies] will gain unprecedented levels of innovation but also build a greener planet and a greener balance sheet.”

Durg spoke with Rebecca Knight, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during AWS re:Invent. They discussed Accenture’s green cloud business case for sustainability. (* Disclosure below.)

Energy reduction = significantly reduced carbon emissions

Any environmental effort is good, but Durg encourages companies to set the bar higher than they are. Hitting a 65% energy reduction in on-premises data centers can bring a company an 84% reduction in its carbon emissions, but configuring applications to the cloud could increase that to a 98% reduction, according to Durg.

“That is a significant benefit for the world,” he added.

Research conducted by Accenture in its “The Green Behind the Cloud”  report found that sustainable cloud migration could remove 59 million tons of carbon dioxide from the environment per year, which is equivalent to clicking your fingers and making the pollution from 22 million cars just disappear. Poof!

Of course, cloud migration doesn’t happen with a snap of the fingers. This is why Accenture has tools, such as its myNav cloud assessment platform, that help companies model the most effective cloud environment for each unique use case. Embedded within myNav is the Green Cloud Advisor module. This captures the carbon footprint of existing data centers and models cloud options for organizations looking to hit environmental and sustainability goals.

“The magnitude of [carbon footprint] reduction can go a long way to meeting climate change commitments, particularly for data-sensitive businesses,” Durg stated. “This is about recommending a green index code, reducing carbon footprint for migration to a greener cloud.”

Accenture walks its own green walk

With 95% of its operations in the cloud and a broad umbrella of environmental efforts, Accenture’s evangelization of sustainable business practices isn’t just hot air.

Along with its internal drive for net-zero operations, Accenture supports international efforts, such as The Great Reset initiative. Spearheaded by the World Economic Forum and Britain’s Prince Charles, this initiative is “a group of global stakeholders cooperating to simultaneously manage the direct consequences of the COVID-19 crisis,” Durg stated. (Note: The initiative is not, as some claim, a conspiracy to implement a Marxist totalitarian regime!)

Enterprise solutions can combine technology and sustainable impact, according to Durg, enabling them to address environmental issues with urgency and scale.

“Sustainability is the future of business,” he said. “In Accenture’s experience with cloud migration we are seeing 20-30% total cost of ownership savings, and it’s driving greater workload flexibility, better server utilization, and more energy-efficient public cloud.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the AWS Executive Summit. Neither Accenture LLP, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE