Embracing public cloud computing helps to mitigate the environmental impact and cuts business operational costs

Internet is a big contributor to carbon emission, more so due to the usage of fossil fuel energy. Given that it is not possible to make an overnight switch to cleaner energy, what can businesses do to ensure they address the problem? Internet and cloud computing will continue to develop, so if a quick solution is not found the situation will worsen. Energy demand will continue rising, meaning more carbon will be emitted. Already major IT companies are taking action; they are leading the way through switching their data centres into renewable energy. Facebook, Google, Amazon among others are making great efforts by making their operations environmentally friendly and setting higher ESG goals.

Embracing public cloud computing

For medium and small businesses setting up their own environmentally friendly data centres can be a challenge. The installation and running costs for such infrastructure will eat on their profits ultimately compromising their survival.

The solution lies with embracing the public cloud computing concept where there are promises of gaining flexibility and scalability and at the same time cut on costs. What these entities may not also realise is that public cloud computing not only benefits their businesses but also the environment.

We all know that the management and processing of data on local servers hugely contribute to carbon emissions. Back in 2016, it was reported that the global data centres used more total electricity consumption than the UK over 416 terawatt-hours and 300 terawatt-hours respectively. That also represented three per cent of the global electricity supply and accounted for about two per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions resulting in that data centres had the same carbon footprint as the aviation industry.

Fewer servers

Switching to the cloud means that the number of servers will be greatly reduced. The fact that data centres are greatly aware of the need to conserve the environment means most of these important infrastructures will be powered efficiently through the use of technologies such as liquid immersion cooling. This will significantly lower not just the amount of power consumed but also carbon emissions, allowing the internet to reduce its impact on the environment.

Be environmentally friendly and switch to the public cloud

Cloud computing is environmentally friendly for several reasons; public cloud data centres have better infrastructure that ensures high efficiency. They are also located near power sources meaning that energy losses are minimised during the transmission process. This coupled with higher utilisation rates means they are more efficient when compared with on-premise data centres where hardware sits idle for a considerable time.

Given internet usage will continue to increase at relatively higher rates, there is a need to find ways through which we can reduce its impact on the environment. Cloud computing not only presents businesses with an opportunity to cut costs but also reduce their carbon footprint. The public cloud is the panacea, it is revolutionising information technology in several ways; the number of servers reduces, the amount of power consumed goes down, and subsequently reduces carbon emission.