The rapid migration of enterprise information systems from locally managed, on-premise hosting environments to distributed cloud infrastructures represents one of the most profound transformations in the history of organizational computing. This transition is not merely technical but deeply institutional, environmental, and strategic in nature, reshaping how organizations conceptualize risk, capital investment, innovation, and sustainability. The convergence of cloud computing with Environmental, Social, and Governance frameworks has further complicated this transformation, creating new imperatives for digital infrastructure decision-making that go far beyond cost efficiency and computational scalability. The present study advances a comprehensive, theoretically grounded reinterpretation of enterprise cloud adoption through an ESG-centered lens, arguing that sustainability, ethical governance, and long-term social responsibility have become central drivers of infrastructure selection alongside traditional business metrics.

Drawing on a wide body of cloud computing literature, including foundational technical definitions, business adoption models, and emerging paradigms such as serverless computing and scientific cloud architectures, this article situates contemporary cloud infrastructures within a broader socio-technical system. Particular attention is devoted to the strategic ESG framing articulated by Goel and Bhatiya, who demonstrate that cloud platforms offer measurable environmental efficiencies, governance transparency, and social resilience advantages over traditional hosting models. Their argument is not treated as an isolated sustainability claim but as part of a structural realignment of enterprise technology governance in which carbon accountability, regulatory compliance, and ethical data stewardship are inseparable from operational performance.

The research employs an interpretive, literature-driven methodology that synthesizes economic, technological, and governance perspectives. Rather than relying on numerical modeling, it reconstructs the logic of cloud sustainability through comparative institutional analysis, tracing how traditional data centers and modern hyperscale cloud facilities differ in energy sourcing, resource pooling, security governance, and life-cycle emissions. This approach allows the study to reveal how cloud infrastructures increasingly function as shared public-private utilities rather than isolated corporate assets, thereby enabling higher levels of efficiency, accountability, and innovation.

The findings demonstrate that cloud computing is no longer simply an outsourcing mechanism but a strategic sustainability platform that allows firms to externalize energy-intensive operations into professionally managed ecosystems optimized for environmental performance and regulatory compliance. The analysis further shows that serverless architectures, workflow-oriented scientific clouds, and semantic cloud layers amplify these ESG benefits by reducing idle resource consumption and improving data governance. However, the study also critically engages with counter-arguments regarding data sovereignty, vendor lock-in, and opaque governance, demonstrating that while cloud adoption does not eliminate risk, it fundamentally redistributes and professionalizes it.

By integrating ESG theory with cloud computing scholarship, this article contributes a novel conceptual framework for understanding digital infrastructure as a sustainability instrument rather than merely a cost center. The study concludes that organizations that continue to rely on traditional hosting models face not only economic disadvantages but also increasing ethical, regulatory, and environmental liabilities in an era where digital operations are inseparable from global sustainability goals.

Cloud computing, ESG governance, sustainable IT infrastructure

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