Cloud Computing: Possible Green Solution for Businesses?

April 13th, 2012 by Zachary Shahan

This is a special guest post on a recent report regarding cloud computing and energy efficiency. Enjoy!

With many businesses venturing into the relatively young world of cloud computing, the question has arisen: “Could cloud computing be a viable way to save significant money on energy costs?” The answer to this question, as addressed by CDW’s fourth annual Energy Efficient IT Report, seems to be a tentative yet hopeful, “Well, it certainly could be.”

The report, which drew from the results of a 760-person survey, in various positions in non-profit, corporate, school, and government sectors, relayed that 62 percent of those asked thought that cloud computing was indeed an energy-efficient solution for data consolidation. Cloud computing “is entirely about IT efficiency, and as a strategy, it can deliver significant energy savings that will complement other solutions within the data center,” said CDW’s vice president of systems solutions, Norm Lillis. Just as other helpful new services, like reverse phone lookup, allow businesses greater autonomy and more options within both client and business-to-business communications, so, too, cloud computing offers a similarly large amount of freedom for large corporations and small businesses alike.

In particular, cloud computing can directly curb emissions, as well as energy costs associated with maintaining office space, by giving employees the freedom to telecommunicate and remotely access data that is otherwise only available at central locales. As with any new technology, however, there are still barriers that need to be broken.

As it would appear now, the main setback that’s associated with cloud computing as a viable option for energy reduction is a sheer lack of knowledge. Many company owners simply don’t know about, or don’t understand, the services that cloud computing can offer. In that same vein, it’s currently hard for businesses to accurately and efficiently measure energy use to decipher where the big incurred energy costs are coming from. As is the case with most new technologies, we look to leading industry corporations for guidance. Will the big computing juggernauts jump on the cloud computing bandwagon singing praises about IT and energy savings? I guess we’ll see.

Cloud computing image via shutterstock

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Tags: cloud computing, cloud computing energy efficiency, cloud computing energy savings, quickies

About the Author

Zachary Shahan spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as the director/chief editor. Otherwise, he's probably enthusiastically fulfilling his duties as the director/editor of Solar Love, EV Obsession, Planetsave, or Bikocity. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and wind energy expert. If you would like him to speak at a related conference or event, connect with him via social media. You can connect with Zach on any popular social networking site you like. Links to all of his main social media profiles are on ZacharyShahan.com.

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http://www.aztecsolar.com/solar-services/commercial-solar Sacramento Solar Companies

Cloud computing sounds as if it has some great possibilities coming up in the future. As experimentation continues and knowledge of cloud computing expands throughout businesses, an exciting new wave of energy savings can begin.
http://blog.imran.com/ imrananwar

#CloudComputing and hyped expectations of savings are a serious problem in business & IT #strategy.

As somebody who works in the industry I am delighted your article did not make cloud computing sound like a panacea that will solve all earthly problems. Yes, indeed there is huge potential for energy and cost savings for businesses of all types.

Most of those come from the fact that they do not need to run large data centers running at less than full capacity. However for those who think somehow cloud computing means there will be no more heat dissipated by millions of data center servers and their hard disks spinning away, they’ll be mistaken.

In reality, the hope would be that if most data centers run at about 33% of capacity on average, and 3 of them decide to move to cloud computing provider, that can cover 100% of their needs, their would surely be energy savings.

The service provider obviously will have to over-provision to be ready for spikes in demand, and that will mean some wasted energy nonetheless.

However the hope is that they are over provisioning to the tune of 20 or 30% not 300%, so clearly significant savings can be achieved.

I’m glad you touched on this important topic and I look forward to following your blog. Thank you.

Imran Anwar –
iCloud.pk