Cloud Computing and Sustainability

This white paper from Microsoft, Accenture and WSP Environment and Energy shows how companies can save anywhere from 30 to 90 percent of their energy use and emissions by moving IT operations to cloud computing infrastructures.

From the introduction to the report:

Both cloud computing and sustainability are emerging as transformative trends in business and society. Most consumers (whether they are aware of it or not) are already heavy users of cloud-enabled services, including email, social media, online gaming, and many mobile applications. The business community has begun to embrace cloud computing as a viable option to reduce costs and to improve IT and business agility.

 

At the same time, sustainability continues to gain importance as a performance indicator for organizations and their IT departments. Corporate sustainability officers, regulators and other stakeholders have become increasingly focused on IT’s carbon footprint, and organizations are likewise placing more emphasis on developing long-term strategies to reduce their carbon footprint through more sustainable operations and products.

Cloud service providers are making significant investments in data center infrastructure to provide not only raw computing power but also Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business applications for their customers. New data centers are being built at ever-larger scales and with increased server density, resulting in greater energy consumption.