Microsoft has launched Microsoft Cloud platform to help companies measure and manage their carbon emissions by setting sustainability goals, at its Inspire 2021 conference. It includes software as a service offering that can find and connect to real-time data sources, track carbon emissions, and provide actionable insights for businesses. According to Accenture, 94 % of top CEOs consider sustainability to be important or very important to their companies' long-term success. However, calculating an organisation's overall environmental impact is particularly difficult. Organisations must be able to track their carbon footprint, report to stakeholders, reduce resource usage, and offset or recycle their carbon footprint. In a recent survey, McKinsey discovered that most companies are struggling to incorporate sustainability into the hard areas of their business, such as the supply chain, indicating that there is room for more integration. The Cloud for Sustainability initiative aims to pave the way by allowing businesses to report carbon emissions from the cloud, devices, and apps as part of their overall environmental footprint. Customers can combine emissions data from multiple sources into a single view and use Cloud for Sustainability to publish a scorecard that can be used to track progress. They can also target specific areas and conduct audits to see if they're on track to meet their emission reduction targets. They can also target specific areas and conduct audits to see if they're on track to meet their emission reduction targets. For instance, if an HVAC system isn't meeting its reduction target on time, the task can be delegated to operations to make improvements in order to meet the target. The launch of Cloud for Sustainability comes at a time when the National Retail Federation reports that more than two-thirds of North American consumers prefer socially responsible brands. Meanwhile, according to Salesforce, 78 % of people believe businesses are to blame for climate change. Microsoft, not to be outdone, co-founded the Green Software Foundation with the Linux Foundation earlier this year to create an ecosystem of people, standards, tooling, and practices to reduce carbon emissions caused by software development. Its goal is to help the information and communications technology sector meet the Paris Climate Agreement's target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45 % by 2030. Microsoft pledged in 2020 to become carbon negative by 2030, meaning the company will remove more carbon from the atmosphere than it produces. Image Source Also read: Construction groups unite to hit net zero target with carbon reporting rules