Sustainability Strategy Gap Analysis

Environmental sustainability is a growing concern for customers, corporate stakeholders, and regulators around the world. Regulators are increasingly singling out the environmental impact of IT infrastructure and operations in recent legislation, adding to the more than 1,900 pieces of climate change and sustainability legislation already enacted over the last decade.

While many enterprises already have a corporate sustainability strategy in place, those overarching programs often fail to incorporate digital infrastructure. Small to mid-sized companies often face the same customer and regulatory demands but lack the resources or expertise to develop a comprehensive sustainability strategy on their own that incorporates digital infrastructure.

Our Sustainability Strategy Gap Analysis (SSGA) helps organizations of any size, at any stage, of their sustainability journey better design and align corporate sustainability objectives to incorporate their digital infrastructure program.

While having a documented strategy is important, for a sustainability strategy to be effective, data center facilities and operations teams must translate it into an actionable plan.

Uptime Institute has over two decades of experience in designing digital infrastructure sustainability programs and putting those programs into practice.

We've leveraged our experience and research insights – documented in the Digital Infrastructure Sustainability Series - to design the SSGA and supplemental offerings. Our Sustainability Strategy Gap Analysis benchmarks your strategy against Uptime’s recommendations presented in the series.

To further support implementation and long-term impact, Uptime offers two additional services:

Sustainability Roadmap that interprets SSGA recommendations into a multi-year implementation plan
Sustainability Working Sessions to address specific challenges and accelerate progress

Together, these offerings support a full sustainability journey–from strategy development through execution and performance optimization.

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Components of Our Sustainability Strategy Gap Analysis

SSGA analyzes an organization’s sustainability readiness in 41 different areas, spanning nine key categories.

Organizational Alignment

Does your organization have executive support and alignment around your digital infrastructure sustainability initiatives?

Sustainability Strategy

Does your organization have documented goals around digital infrastructure sustainability including owned and operated infrastructure as well as colocation and cloud service providers?

Site Location and Design

Does your data center design and site selection process align with your sustainability strategy?

Facilities Energy Use

Does your facilities team have an efficiency plan in place, with mechanisms to capture, track and report upon your required metrics?

IT Systems Energy Use

Does your IT team actively use power management features, leverage virtualization and maximize server utilization?

Cloud and Colocation Sustainability

Does your colocation and cloud strategy incorporate site selection, key metrics, reporting and plans aligned to your sustainability strategy?

Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Reductions

Have you incorporated Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 considerations into your strategy, and do you have a plan to track and improve those metrics over time?

Water Management

Does your organization track water usage and have a water reduction plan in place?

Circular Economy

Does your company use circular economy principles of repairing, reusing and recycling components to minimize waste?

Sustainability Strategy Gap Analysis Engagement and Deliverables

The analysis can be conducted on-site or remotely, depending on the needs and organization of the customer. Many sustainability teams span multiple physical locations - so details can be discussed at the time of engagement.

The analysis itself will be conducted over the course of several days, incorporating interviews with staff and leadership, as well as review of existing documentation and practices.

The final report will be delivered as a gap analysis, including practical guidance based upon Uptime Institute's real world digital infrastructure experience, identifying gaps in your current approach - and prioritized recommendations to address those gaps.

Sustainability Roadmap: Structured Planning for Execution

For organizations seeking that next step after the SSGA, the Sustainability Roadmap provides a structured, time-based framework to implement identified priorities and initiatives. This service turns assessment insights into a detailed action plan, tailored to your business objectives, resource availability, and sustainability targets.

Deliverables include:

A timeline of tasks aligned to sustainability strategy categories
Task cards detailing ownership, estimated effort, and key dependencies
Integration guidance to embed sustainability into business and operations planning
A foundation for long-term improvements and progress reporting

Whether your goal is internal alignment, external compliance, or stakeholder transparency, the Roadmap provides clarity and direction.

Sustainability Working Sessions

Uptime’s Working Sessions are focused engagements designed to help teams address specific sustainability topics in depth. These 3–4-hour sessions are delivered virtually and facilitated by Uptime subject matter experts.

They are ideal for organizations that want to make measurable progress between major milestones or need targeted support on key issues.

Clients receive:

Custom templates, working documents, and meeting notes
Expert guidance tailored to organizational maturity and goals
Recommendations ready for implementation

Working sessions are available independently or bundled with SSGA and Sustainability Roadmap engagements.

Start Building or Advancing Your Strategy

Whether you’re starting your digital infrastructure sustainability journey or taking it further, Uptime Institute has the experience and tools to help you succeed.

Contact us to explore how SSGA, Roadmaps, and Working Sessions can support your goals.