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Sustainability and the Cloud: It’s a Dream — It can be Improved, but It will Never be Truly Sustainable
It can be hard to argue that cloud computing is beneficial to the environment. After all, technology of all kinds use massive amounts of electricity and generate massive amounts of discarded electronic waste. But when cloud computing is compared to on-premise computing, we can see that cloud computing is a more energy efficient option.
One advantage in the area of sustainability that cloud computing has over on-premise computing is volume. Tiny Haynes, Gartner analyst, said that “an Amazon data center will be far more efficient as it’s so much bigger than a smaller data center you have on-premise. You get the economies of scale and efficiencies on that side of things.”
The cloud advantages of size and economies of scale include the benefits of:
- Better Infrastructure – Cloud vendors do one thing and have the size and budget to make sure they do it right.
- Higher Utilization Rate – More customers and cloud users mean equipment can be more easily optimized to reduce idleness and provide higher utilization.
- Hardware Refresh – To remain competitive and economical, newer and more efficient equipment are frequently replacing older equipment.
- Reduced Electricity – concentrated location of infrastructure like power supplies and cooling, along with higher utilization, mean that cloud vendors can be more energy efficient.
Haynes said that “there are many factors that can help IT leaders achieve a sustainable future. The idea of simply using renewable energy is not sustainable in its entirety. It’s certainly a big contribution to sustainability but it’s not a totally sustainable approach.”
Hello,
Sustainability and the Cloud are two important topics that we all need to be aware of. The Cloud is a term used to describe the trend of businesses and individuals increasingly moving towards using remote servers and data storage instead of having everything on-premises. There are many benefits to using the Cloud, including cost savings, scalability, and efficiency. However, there are also risks associated with this way of doing business, as with anything. Chief among these risks is the question of sustainability. Can the Cloud be relied on to remain sustainable in the long term?