The residents of Potters Bar are working to protect the "green belt" of farms, forests, and meadows that surround London from the endless demand for AI infrastructure. A short drive from London, the town of Potters Bar is separated from the village of South Mimms by 85 acres of rolling farmland segmented by a scribble of hedgerows. In one of the fields, a lone oak serves as a rest stop along a public footpath. Lately, the tree has become a site of protest, too. A poster tied to its trunk reads: "NO TO DATA CENTRE."

We are excited to bring Transform 2022 back in-person July 19 and virtually July 20 - 28. Join AI and data leaders for insightful talks and exciting networking opportunities. When it comes to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), the United States is moving backwards, according to a report released earlier this year by the Rhodium Group, an independent research organization. The report says, "… progress in reducing U.S. GHG emissions was reversed in 2021, moving from 22.2% below 2005 levels in 2020 to only 17.4% in 2021, putting the U.S. even further off track from achieving its 2025 and 2030 climate targets." The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) took on the trend and recently detailed newly proposed rules that would require companies -- both foreign and domestic that are registered with the SEC -- to report climate impact and emissions information. The proposal aims to bring standardization via policy to what has, until now, been largely optional -- unlike the EU, which established similar reporting requirements in 2014.

As companies strive to improve efficiency and increase innovation and customer engagement, digital transformation is becoming an imperative. In response, CIOs are leaving nothing to chance, overhauling virtually every facet of their companies. Today's trends are tomorrow's reality, and the sooner you take action, the greater the chance of continued growth and efficiency. Yet while most CIOs are feeling the pressure to drive their company's transformation, many lack a plan for doing so. Historically, CIOs oversaw the computer systems and other components of their company's IT infrastructure.

To grow market share, many cloud service providers (CSPs) are introducing specialized compute instances, which target data-intensive workloads and ease the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) into enterprise business applications as a strategy to capture market share. This type of activity is expanding the high-growth cloud-as-a-service (CaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) segments. The off-premises cloud service market is expected to reach $374 billion in 2022, at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.7 percent. Innovative service offerings by CSPs are multiplying, including the introduction of blockchain technology in PaaS service offers. They are also introducing new services focused on enterprise verticals, including the following: healthcare, to aid diagnosis; energy, for oil and gas exploration; financial services, for transaction monitoring; and supply chain efficiencies in retail and government, for smart city infrastructure.

With 400 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute and fleets of self-driving cars mapping high definition 3D maps of roads all over the world, data is being created, stored and processed at a rate never seen before. Ninety percent of the world's data has been created in the last two years, according to IBM and other industry sources, and with new data hungry applications on the rise (autonomous driving, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence), there's no sign of this trend abating. Organizing, storing and processing all that data comes with not only business, but also environmental challenges. In fact, networking and telecom equipment maker Huawei has estimated that global computing power could consume as much as 20% of global electricity in 2025 and account for 3.5% of global emissions.[1] All this data processing also requires large amounts of water to keep servers from overheating - roughly 1.8 liters for every kWh consumed - according to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).