Ecological sustainability is one of the most discussed global issues, affecting every market segment and everything that surrounds us in our daily lives.
More and more businesses worldwide are trying to consume fewer resources, especially energy, and reduce waste production, especially non-recyclable ones.
For this reason, the requirement and the willingness to migrate towards greener, more ecological, and environmentally friendly technologies, also in the field of cloud computing, is growing rapidly.
The increasing demand for migrating to cloud infrastructure has led to a sustainable increase in electricity consumption and other resources.
For instance, according to a recent report by Enel X, data centers around the globe currently consume approximately 200 terawatts per hour in the year, much more than some nations’ annual electricity consumption. And this number is expected to grow significantly shortly.
Therefore, adopting the so-called green cloud computing can be an excellent contribution to reducing our footprint on global energy consumption.
In addition to other benefits, consuming less energy minimizes the entire infrastructure’s operating and management costs.
Read on to find various benefits associated with green cloud computing for businesses:
What Is Green Cloud Computing?
Green cloud computing comprises a set of guidelines designed to ensure that all the activities performed within a cloud ecosystem produce minimal ecological footprint and reduce the impact these technologies have on the environment.
Simply put, green cloud computing signifies providing and ecologically using cloud computing services. This also translates into the conscious implementation of specific solutions and technical choices.
It is, therefore, a question of optimizing energy consumption and reducing energy waste: the same common sense practices that we also try to adopt in our everyday life.
Choosing the cloud is inherently more sustainable.
By and large, choosing cloud solutions positively impacts the environment.
Cloud solution providers have a lower carbon footprint and are more energy efficient than an enterprise server system or an average local data center.
This is because they have the necessary financial capacity to invest in new power and cooling technologies designed to consume less power, which makes managing a large number of servers less impactful.
In addition, the use of cloud services is based on shared resources, such as networks, physical structures, and computing machines designed to be fully exploited with the least possible waste.
For instance, nowadays, modern computers take full advantage of the dynamic scalability of the voltage frequency to save resources. Still, the mega servers used for the cloud are even more optimized, provided the enormous amount of machines (and therefore of consumption) involved.
In a few words, cloud service providers are big enough to make large economies of scale, pushing the optimization and use of efficient hardware and processes to the maximum.
Incorporating the same thing independently in your on-premises IT infrastructure would be much more expensive.
Green cloud computing from the point of view of the service provider and the customer
Having clarified this, even better results can be achieved by applying green cloud computing practices. From this point of view, environmental sustainability becomes a shared responsibility between cloud service providers and customers.
- Cloud service providers are responsible for cloud optimization with the help of a less powerful infrastructure.
- Clients are responsible for sustainability in the cloud, paying attention to optimizing workloads and minimizing the total resources required.
Benefits of green cloud computing:
If we had to summarize the concept in a few words, we would say that green cloud computing is a solution that allows you to take full advantage of all the advantages of a cloud platform while at the same time reducing its adverse effects on the environment.
For businesses, adopting green cloud computing solutions provides three fundamental benefits:
- Reduce harmful emissions
Migrating from an on-premises data center infrastructure to a green cloud solution helps businesses eliminate the requirement of physical servers, which results in energy savings and fewer greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
As mentioned, green cloud computing service providers have perfected the technology to consume as few resources as possible, so effectively and with such economies of scale that the same results are nowhere near close to traditional data centers.
- Save on operating costs.
The more effectively you use the cloud, the less you need to spend.
This is because by focusing on elements such as better server utilization rates, greater flexibility in workflow management, and more eco-friendly infrastructure, green cloud computing allows for lower power consumption and, therefore, more significant savings.
According to expert opinion, cloud migration, especially to green platforms, can result in savings between 30% and 40%, depending on the case.
- Improve software performance
Optimizing a software or application to use fewer resources also signifies developing a more agile and faster product.
A high-performance service with a well-optimized interface is necessary to satisfy end customers best.
In the same way, if the development concerns IT solutions for internal use, better performance will automatically translate into greater productivity.
Wrapping up
The cloud computing benefits have come a long way in recent years and show no signs of slowing growth.
Many people see this development as a cause of environmental damage, but green computing partially reverses this paradigm, helping to reduce global GHG (Greenhouse Gases) emissions.
In addition to offering greater adaptability, convenience, versatility, and low costs, green cloud computing also provides the opportunity to renew work processes, making them less harmful to the environment.
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