The implications of global warming and the sustainability of industries that consume significant energy and other resources have become more of a central concern in industrialised countries with global governments pledging to bring global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2050. In order to reach net zero industries and companies will need to see where their most significant environmental impacts are, measure and report on them to communicate to stakeholders and ultimately work towards driving improvements. One way to do this is to define company wide environmental KPIs and manage environmental impact based on these. 

The following Paragraphs are taken from the Government Design Manual:

Over the course of the next five years, Garner believe enterprises will spend $112 billion cumulatively software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS)  [Gartner11].  Among the reasons given was a desire to reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for products and services. A survey conducted by Gartner in 2H10 in EMEA with 90 respondents, established the primary reasons SaaS was being considered. The most common reason selected (with 48 out of 90 respondents) was: "…considered to be more cost-effective from a TCO standpoint than on-premises solutions."