Cloud Computing: Possible Green Solution for Businesses?
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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