UKCloud Announces Carbon Negative Cloud Services Highlighting The Need For IT Modernisation Across Public Sector

Having been certified Carbon Neutral since 2011, UKCloud commits to offering additional carbon offset to enable its customers to consume carbon negative cloud as an alternative to inefficient on-premises IT environments

UKCloud, the multi-cloud experts dedicated to making transformation happen across UK public sector, has today announced it has extended its provision of certified Carbon Neutral cloud services to now provide carbon negative cloud services in support of the UK government’s sustainable technology strategy.

The global lockdown has demonstrated that it is indeed possible for technology to enable the achievement of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the implementation of the UK Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan which the Government Digital Service (GDS) blogged about last year. According to GDS, UKCloud is the only cloud provider to have supplied data about the electricity usage of its digital services, and every UKCloud customer receives a monthly statement which independently certifies that any carbon produced in the delivery of the cloud service has been entirely offset.

UKCloud is now extending its commitment to sustainable technology by announcing that it can now provide carbon negative cloud services – available at no extra cost to public sector organisations in support of their environmental obligations.

“Every organisation in the world has a moral obligation to do whatever they can to reduce their carbon footprint to net zero as soon as possible. UKCloud has long recognised this, and since 2011 we have engaged Natural Capital Partners to independently certify our cloud services as Carbon Neutral. We’re delighted to extend this commitment to sustainable technology by becoming the first to provide carbon negative cloud services to the UK public sector”, said John Godwin, Director of IA and Compliance at UKCloud.

The environmental benefits of cloud services are well documented in the DEFRA report, ‘Helping businesses create a greener, more sustainable future through ICT’, as well as by techUK in its paper, ‘Cloud 2020 and beyond’, which states, “The adoption of cloud models and services presents organisations with an opportunity to demonstrate a relatively ‘quick win’ for cutting down emissions related to their operations”. This is because many public sector organisations operate inefficient computer rooms and datacentres which are often plagued by under-utilised IT and technology that is older and inherently less energy efficient, secure and resilient than the infrastructure used by cloud service providers like UKCloud.

Whilst cloud is the accepted default for modern cloud native applications, nearly 4 in 5 respondents to the recent State of Cloud Adoption survey agreed that the incompatibility of public cloud with existing applications inhibited their adoption of cloud. Indeed, 85% of respondents to that survey agreed that they would move more systems to the cloud if there were cloud environments that mirrored on-premises technology. This highlights the need met by UKCloud’s development of a government-grade multi-cloud environment which brings together familiar technologies with cloud native technologies and so helps public sector organisations to modernise their datacentre environments and shutdown inefficient and unsustainable legacy facilities.

Technology is both the problem and the solution when it comes to sustainability and the government’s 25 Year Environment Plan. Legacy technology, such as on-premises datacentres, is a massive consumer of power and a significant contributor to carbon emissions. This was part of the reason that the government created Crown Hosting in partnership with Ark Data Centres, to encourage the consolidation and rationalisation of hundreds of inefficient computer rooms and datacentres to a handful of larger and more efficient facilities that typically reduce carbon emissions by at least 50%. UKCloud provides native cloud services in those same Ark datacentres to accelerate decommissioning of legacy facilities in favour more secure and sustainable government-grade facilities.

UKCloud has published a Greening Government: Sustainable Technology white paper and is offering a free discovery workshop with its multi-cloud experts to public sector organisations wishing to explore the security, affordability and sustainability of multi-cloud services as a replacement of inefficient legacy IT solutions or for modern solutions like remote working environments.