By 2027, more than two-thirds of all organizations adopting generative artificial intelligence (AI) will decide which public cloud services to use based on environmental sustainability and digital sovereignty factors, according to industry analysts.

The public cloud, with its scale and shared-services model, is the best-suited technology to develop general purpose foundation models (FMs) and to deliver generative AI (genAI) applications at scale, according to Gartner VP analyst Sid Nag.

But certain aspects of the public cloud, like sustainability issues and the ability to control where data is stored, for example, need to be addressed before organizations can effectively operationalize genAI technology.

“Cloud computing plays a pivotal role today in supporting sustainability and genAI business applications by providing scalable infrastructure, enabling eco-friendly practices and allowing cost-effective resource management,” Nag said. “Therefore, cloud is the platform that most IT leaders rely upon to support their sustainability journey when it comes to overall genAI implementation.”

How sustainability impacts cloud decision-making Gartner predicts 70% of organizations will be making their cloud decisions based on sustainability factors – issues like renewable energy, power consumption and water use, which all contribute to the carbon emissions profile of cloud computing.

The scale of public cloud infrastructure will naturally attract organizations deploying genAI applications, but cloud providers will need to address issues related to sustainability in order to maintain their market share.

The research firm expects pressures to operate sustainably from investors, clients, governments and regulatory bodies will be the main driver of IT carbon emissions reduction initiatives. To that point, new capabilities, tools and processes will emerge with a focus on monitoring and managing the energy use and carbon emissions associated with genAI workloads deployed in the public cloud.

How digital sovereignty impacts cloud decision-making Foundation models and large language models (LLMs), which are core to genAI capabilities, will continue accelerating the evolution of genAI applications and use cases. Implementing genAI in an enterprise environment, however, will surface substantial regulatory challenges on the data within LLMs and within the applications that use those LLMs, according to Gartner.

As a result, the firm predicts that specialty cloud providers will be considered by most enterprises as they expand their cloud footprint to a wider range of geographies and use cases for genAI. “Digital sovereignty will drive the need to include cloud providers that can meet the evolving and unique requirements of sovereign operations – no matter the region they operate in,” Nag said.