How Cloud Computing Solutions Help with Environmental Sustainability

Source : greenprophet｜Author : Bhok Thompson

The use of cloud computing provides a variety of benefits for businesses and other organizations, including the convenience of large-scale data storage, preservation, and analysis. Cloud-based services are another alternative for companies aiming to lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) while increasing company agility. Yet, when organizations examine the advantages of cloud-based solutions, one factor that they may overlook is the beneficial influence that cloud computing has on the environment.

Cloud computing could cut down on energy use, waste, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by a lot. According to JFrog, this article goes into further depth on how cloud computing benefits the environment in a number of ways.

Utilize Virtualization to Boost Sustainability

The main reasons for virtualization are to save money and make operations more efficient. However, virtualization has benefits that go far beyond these two areas. Virtualization, with the use of a hypervisor, allows the organization to produce several virtual machines (VMs) and run several applications on a single physical server. As a result, carbon-intensive equipment in the physical world is being phased out in favor of digital equivalents.

For example, if a company wants to broadcast movies, it might use a single virtual machine (VM) instead of a server that takes up a lot of space and uses a lot of resources. This can help the organization reduce its overall carbon impact as well as its power use. Moving your on-premises IT infrastructure to the cloud reduces the number of servers required to operate your organization. 

Since cloud computing cuts down on the need for physical hardware, it also cuts down on the amount of e-waste that is made when old IT equipment is thrown away. Cloud computing also allows organizations to reduce their dependence on paper. You no longer need to print a document to sign it since cloud-based services like DocuSign enable you to do it electronically. This job can be completed with a few mouse clicks.

Energy Management

One of the most important aspects of environmentally friendly cloud computing is the use of renewable energy to power data centers all over the globe. Therefore, powering the whole data center with renewable energy is not currently feasible; nonetheless, in the majority of situations, at least half of the energy source comes from the sun or the wind.

Apart from that, energy is saved inside the battery banks to be used on days when there is insufficient energy produced in real-time. The increased use of renewable energy in the operation and maintenance of massive data center leads to a significant decrease in carbon footprint.

Enhanced Infrastructure 

It is usual for public cloud data centers to be located near the facilities that generate their energy to minimize the amount of power wasted when it is transmitted across long distances. When it comes to location, conventional data centers seldom have a choice unless the firm building them has a large amount of cash, such as Facebook or Yahoo. Because of the enhanced hardware design of cloud computing data centers, less wattage is needed to provide backup power and cooling to the data centers themselves. These data centers are designed to operate at scale and are built with energy efficiency in mind, to reach maximum capacity while maintaining an optimal temperature.

Increased Utilization

Traditionally, firms would use their private data centers, which means that these organizations will have poor utilization rates since equipment must be ordered and built ahead of expected increases in server demand. Cloud computing enables consolidation of machine utilization and high utilization of server operations, resulting in greater efficiency. When hardware is left underutilized, as is often the case in private data centers, it leads to inefficient operations and harms the environment. The commonly utilized design of public cloud servers, on the other hand, makes them two to four times more efficient than traditional data centers.

Reduced Emissions of Greenhouse Gases

The use of cloud computing leads to a decrease in the number of greenhouse gases (GHG) released by data centers. According to recent Accenture research, switching to cloud computing may cut a company’s carbon footprint per user by anywhere from 30 to 90 percent. According to the research, cloud computing has a major influence on greenhouse gas emissions. Every organization will discover that measuring and cutting their carbon emissions is a difficult task, but moving to a cloud-based computing environment is a smart place to start.

Conclusion

Shifting to the cloud is a step in the right direction for IT and business leaders looking to improve their organizations’ sustainability.

When your company considers the potential of moving to the cloud, it is making a deliberate decision to reduce its environmental impact and conserve our natural resources.

Make sure that your final choice of cloud service provider exerts these efforts to cut costs into account. Cloud service companies are increasingly making pledges to reduce the amount of power and water used by their data centers.