Greening the Cloud: How Cloud Computing Can Help the Environment?
Many organizations moving towards cloud computing due to its ability to improve collaboration and communication among teams, enhance data security, and offer cost savings compared to traditional on-premises infrastructure.
Well, there’s also a greener side!
Cloud migrations have the potential to reduce energy consumption by 65% and carbon emissions by 84% while reducing the total cost of ownership by 30-40%!1 According to the Microsoft-WSP collaborative study, cloud computing can improve energy efficiency by 93% and produce 98% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than on-premises IT infrastructure.2
As a result, companies are increasingly designing and using cloud technology with an eye toward sustainability. In this blog, we’ll explore how harnessing cloud computing technology can help your business become more environmentally friendly.
How Greening Your Cloud can help your Business Achieve Sustainable Efficiency?
- Reduced Hardware
Organizations won’t need their own hardware to power software and applications if they move their on-premises IT systems to the cloud. A cloud hosting company can shoulder the responsibility of managing equipment on behalf of organizations, hosting and deploying IT infrastructure at scale more effectively. Hence, businesses will use less energy and leave a smaller carbon footprint.
Related Reading: 5 Ways Companies can lower their Carbon Footprint and Contribute to a Greener Future
- Intensive Storage
High-carbon equipment is required to power servers around-the-clock, resulting in enormous energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Cloud computing is a more effective way to run ERP systems and applications since it requires less physical infrastructure to execute heavy workloads and store vast amounts of data. Moreover, using fewer resources lowers organizational expenses, lowers the likelihood of resource exhaustion, and promotes sustainability.
- Consensus Demand
Organizations can run numerous applications on the same server and even safely share server space with their partner organizations to save energy consumption by working with a cloud hosting provider to manage their IT infrastructure. The same ERP software and applications can then be deployed on fewer physical servers overall, and resources can be shared over the network. Organizations with numerous locations can consolidate their cloud infrastructure and many users who have made the switch claim quicker speeds and thus lower energy use.3
- Efficient use of resources
The adaptability of cloud computing is an important aspect to highlight. To meet demand, suppliers can dynamically scale resources up and down while minimizing possible energy waste. With this variable resource allocation, businesses only pay for what they really use, providing another way to decrease costs and direct emissions. Cloud service providers can also manage workload in accordance with the availability of renewable energy, allowing the public sector to lessen its dependency on fossil fuels.
Related Reading: 6 Technologies to help your Business Achieve Sustainability Goals in 2023
- Indirect Benefits
Further ways that moving to the cloud can increase organizational sustainability are as follows. It primarily supports the trend towards remote and hybrid working, reducing the number of emissions created and energy needed for personnel to commute to and from work. As a result, businesses may use virtual productivity tools more effectively and generate less paper waste. Moving to the cloud is a crucial first step for any public sector organization trying to raise its environmental profile.
Green Cloud emphasizes the use of renewable energy sources
Several cloud data centers are switching to renewable energy sources to run their operations. There are already some people there. Geothermal, solar, wind, hydropower, and other renewable energy sources will produce more environmentally beneficial electricity. Numerous IT firms, including Agile IT, have already taken the lead by using wind energy to power their corporate headquarters. Businesses may store their data safely on the cloud while also increasing their productivity thanks to cloud computing. One of the cloud computing platforms that is attempting to develop more renewable energy sources is Amazon Web Services.
Green Cloud Computing: It’s time to make the switch!
With dematerialization, cloud computing significantly advances sustainability. High-carbon physical products can be replaced by their digital counterparts thanks to this approach. Moving to the cloud will immediately reduce the use of equipment and software that uses more energy. That will also result in lower expenses. Businesses can profit from these savings by using them to fund other worthwhile initiatives.
Also, it spares you from operating numerous devices and aids in keeping your attention on your primary objective.
There has never been a better time to make the transfer to the cloud due to the rapidly rising cost and the increased pressure on businesses to meet environmental goals. Let’s never accept less than the best and always strive for a simplified, optimized, energy-efficient IT infrastructure. It’s time to make the switch, it’s time to Go Green!
Endnotes
1. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07421222.2022.2063551?journalCode=mmis20
2. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sustainability/assess?activetab=pivot:azuretab
