How ABB Built a Multi-Cloud Emissions Baseline and Roadmap for Sustainable IT
ABB engaged Anglepoint to improve the measurability and governance of its cloud emissions reporting across Azure, AWS, and GCP. Building on an existing ITAM partnership and deep knowledge of ABB's environment, Anglepoint assessed ABB's reporting landscape, identified gaps in attribution and data quality, and established a multi-cloud emissions baseline. From there, Anglepoint delivered actionable recommendations to reduce emissions and cloud cost, along with a practical roadmap for embedding Sustainable IT governance as an ongoing, cross-functional process across Green IT, FinOps, and ITAM.
Challenge
ABB was already using vendor-provided information to determine cloud emissions and was ready to take the next step toward a more mature Sustainable IT program. The goals were to establish a trusted single source of truth of data for cloud emissions reporting, develop a clear carbon emissions reduction roadmap, and create an ongoing Sustainable IT Governance process.
To support that next phase, ABB engaged Anglepoint to assess the current reporting model, identify opportunities to improve data quality and attribution, and define practical next steps for advancing its Sustainable IT program. Anglepoint was uniquely positioned to support this initiative due to its long-standing partnership with ABB’s ITAM team and proven track record of delivering cost optimization, risk remediation, and program maturity improvements. Combined with a deep understanding of ABB’s environment and operational priorities, this experience enabled Anglepoint to help ABB move beyond baseline reporting toward a more actionable, enterprise-ready Sustainable IT capability through integrated ITAM, FinOps, and Green IT Services expertise.
Because ABB operates in a large, multi-cloud environment, improving precision required careful assessment of several data and reporting factors. Each cloud provider uses its own methodology to calculate emissions, making it difficult to manage multiple data sources with different calculation approaches for enterprise-wide reporting. Key reporting factors included a gap analysis of cloud spend to determine coverage, along with areas where emissions attribution could be refined to improve accountability and enable trend analysis over time. Addressing these areas would help ABB build a more complete view of its cloud environmental footprint and strengthen how emissions data was measured, interpreted, and acted on.
ABB worked with Anglepoint to establish a defensible multi-cloud emissions baseline, identify cost, and carbon reduction opportunities, and build a governance roadmap for long-term Sustainable IT maturity.
ABB also emphasized the importance of integrating water and electricity consumption data, in addition to carbon emissions data, with cost impact analysis to provide a more comprehensive view of environmental performance.
To ensure clear accountability, it was critical that emissions be mapped to the relevant Business Area and aligned to ABB’s organizational structure. Through a cloud tagging analysis, inconsistencies and gaps were highlighted for correction so emissions reduction strategies could be governed according to “The ABB Way.”
Solution
Services
Anglepoint was chosen based on its existing partnership as ABB's ITAM Managed Services Provider for many years. Having run ABB's Flexera instance that governs all IT assets and worked within ABB's organizational structure, Anglepoint deeply understood the environment, the stakeholders, and how to enable change effectively within “The ABB Way.”
ABB engaged Anglepoint to establish a holistic baseline for cloud emissions, identify opportunities to improve data quality, provide recommendations to reduce emissions and advance its Sustainable IT program.
Trusted Data
Anglepoint’s Green IT and data intelligence teams evaluated data from available tooling options, including Flexera One, the trusted source of truth for ABB’s asset information. The emissions data from Flexera’s Sustainability Module, powered by Green Pixie, was validated for accuracy and coverage for AWS, Azure and GCP cloud emission, electricity, water, and cost data. Anglepoint attributed emissions consumption and recommendations to Business Areas based on tagging to ensure actions could be assigned to the right team.
By leveraging Flexera for ITAM, FinOps and Green IT data, multi-cloud sustainability data could be found in one tool, fully connecting cost, environmental impact, and ownership across the organization.
Reductions Management
Anglepoint analyzed emissions, electricity, water, and cost data from Flexera to establish an actionable roadmap to achieve cloud cost optimization and carbon emissions reduction.
The assessment helped ABB identify targeted opportunities to improve cloud emissions visibility, strengthen attribution, and guide future optimization efforts across its multi-cloud environment.
Collaboration with ABB’s FinOps team was critical throughout the process, especially to validate the feasibility of the recommendations.
Carbon emissions reduction strategies included location migration, environment right sizing, modernization and time-shifting, prioritized for ABB with the estimated emissions and cost impact to enable quick action.
Strategy
Anglepoint went beyond creating an emissions baseline to provide holistic recommendations, including data quality improvements, tagging strategies, and defined a governance approach to operationalize emissions. To achieve long-term Sustainable IT maturity, it was important to establish an ongoing process built on cross-functional collaboration across Green IT, FinOps and ITAM teams and define an overall governance approach that was repeatable and could be integrated into business-as-usual operations.
Together, these steps created a practical roadmap for ABB to continue advancing toward a governed, decision-ready process to build a more mature Sustainable IT capability.
Results
- Strengthened cloud emissions visibility: ABB gained a clearer view of how its multi-cloud sustainability data could better support reporting, optimization, and governance.
- Identified cost savings potential: Four modelled scenarios identified opportunities to reduce both CO2e emissions and cloud cost spend, giving ABB a basis for prioritizing action.
- Improved reporting confidence and attribution clarity: The engagement validated where existing datasets were strong and highlighted the most important opportunities to improve measurability, mapping, and accountability.
- Established a roadmap for cloud emissions reduction: ABB gained practical insights to improve cloud reporting, prioritize reduction opportunities, and connect emissions insights to ongoing cloud optimization.