The transformation of information technology infrastructure from locally owned, capital-intensive hosting environments to globally distributed cloud computing ecosystems constitutes one of the most significant socio-technical shifts of the contemporary digital economy. This transformation is not merely technical; it is simultaneously organizational, environmental, economic, and ethical. Early conceptualizations of cloud computing emphasized elasticity, virtualization, and service-oriented architectures as the primary drivers of value, a perspective that remains visible in classical historical accounts of cloud development (Wikipedia, n.d.; ComputerWeekly, n.d.; Webopedia, n.d.). However, as cloud adoption has matured into an infrastructural default for enterprises, governments, and civil society, the underlying rationales for cloud migration have expanded far beyond cost reduction and scalability. Today, cloud computing must be evaluated through a multidimensional lens that incorporates sustainability, security, governance, and strategic resilience. The emerging integration of environmental, social, and governance principles into digital infrastructure decision-making has further complicated the analytical landscape, requiring scholars to revisit foundational assumptions about what constitutes technological efficiency and organizational responsibility.

Recent scholarship has begun to position cloud computing as a central pillar of corporate sustainability strategies, particularly through its capacity to reduce energy consumption, optimize hardware utilization, and enable more transparent governance frameworks (Goel and Bhatiya, 2025). Their argument reframes cloud infrastructure not as a neutral technical substrate but as a strategic environmental and governance choice that materially affects corporate carbon footprints, regulatory compliance, and long-term value creation. This perspective challenges earlier narratives that treated cloud adoption primarily as an economic or engineering decision, and it demands a more comprehensive theoretical framework that connects digital infrastructure to broader societal and ecological systems.

At the same time, longstanding concerns surrounding security, privacy, and control in cloud environments have not diminished. Foundational studies of cloud security and privacy risks emphasized vulnerabilities related to multi-tenancy, data sovereignty, and loss of direct administrative control (Dillon et al., 2010; Zhou et al., 2010; Yang and Chen, 2010). These concerns remain deeply relevant, especially as cloud platforms increasingly host critical national infrastructure, sensitive personal data, and core business processes. The tension between the environmental and strategic benefits of cloud computing and the perceived risks associated with outsourcing control to third-party providers creates a complex decision environment for organizations, policymakers, and regulators.

This article develops a comprehensive, literature-grounded analysis of cloud computing as a socio-technical and environmental infrastructure that redefines the meaning of hosting in the twenty-first century. Drawing strictly on the provided references, the study integrates historical accounts of cloud evolution, technical and security scholarship, and contemporary ESG-oriented analysis to construct a unified theoretical model of cloud infrastructure as a strategic governance platform. Through an interpretive and comparative methodological approach, the article examines how cloud computing simultaneously addresses and generates risks in domains of security, sustainability, and organizational control. It argues that cloud adoption should be understood not as a discrete technological upgrade but as a form of infrastructural re-alignment that reshapes power relations between firms, technology providers, regulators, and society.

The findings demonstrate that cloud computing’s sustainability advantages are structurally linked to its architectural features, particularly resource pooling, virtualization, and global load balancing, which together enable far higher levels of energy efficiency than traditional on-premise hosting (Goel and Bhatiya, 2025; Wikipedia, n.d.). However, these same features also intensify concerns about data governance and accountability, as they concentrate control within large platform providers (Zhou et al., 2010; Yang and Chen, 2010). The article concludes that the future of cloud computing will be determined not only by technological innovation but by the evolution of governance frameworks capable of aligning environmental responsibility, security, and corporate strategy in an increasingly interconnected digital world.