CIOs do not care about the energy efficiency of cloud computing, categorizing it as a cloud service provider

What is the green cloud computing? And self-built and operating data centers for comparison, the cloud computing whether energy or energy? Compared with the hosting mode, cloud computing is not really have a higher energy efficiency? And Advanced Data Center Hosting Services (Ideally Power Usage Efficiency - PUE = 1) What's Cloud Computing? Which is more energy-efficient than buying your own cloud from a cloud service provider (building your own services and applications under your corporate firewall)?

Most CIOs can not answer this question because they are not concerned about the efficiency of cloud computing, which should be a cloud service provider. But for those CIOs who want cloud computing as an energy-saving opportunity, they should not be ignored.

Because of the elasticity and automation provided by cloud computing, CIOs are already using it to speed delivery, avoid the upfront investment in infrastructure, and rely on it for efficiency. For cloud computing, CIOs focus on security, reliability, vendor lock-in and the lack of typical business cases. For example, financial companies are especially tied to data security laws when using public clouds. Technology and pharmaceutical companies are concerned about the protection of intellectual property. Telecom companies have long embarked on a private cloud exploration to prove their cloud services to potential customers. In short, energy saving has not become the focus of attention.

The above conclusions are drawn from a survey by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a nonprofit organization that helps companies track carbon emissions. The survey, conducted by independent consulting firm Verdantix, conducted extensive research on 11 international companies to assess the potential economic and ecological benefits of cloud computing.

Move to cloud computing: reduce 5.7 million cars, save 12.3 billion US dollars

Now let's go back to the topic of how to save energy in cloud computing. Research shows that by 2020, companies with annual revenues of more than $ 1 billion in the United States will spend 69% of their IT budgets (primarily on infrastructure, platforms and software) on cloud computing services - cutting $ 12.3 billion As well as the equivalent of 200 million barrels of crude oil (enough to drive 5.7 million vehicles a year) of carbon emissions. Moving a HR application to the public cloud saved the company $ 12 million in five years and reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 30,000 tons (equivalent to a reduction of 5,900 vehicles in less than a year). Private clouds can save $ 5 million in cost over five years and reduce emissions by 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide (equivalent to a reduction of 49,000 vehicles traveling within a year).

So how attractive is the energy savings of cloud computing to businesses? Paul Stemmler, president of engineering and integration at Citigroup, said: "The reduction in carbon emissions is certainly a driver, but certainly not the most important thing." It is also a common view in the industry.

Relative to the self-built and operation and maintenance of data centers, cloud computing is also more difficult to quantify the environmental benefits. But at least superficially, large-scale cloud computing service provider operations data centers have huge advantages in terms of energy consumption and cost. John Stanley, an analyst at 451 Research in charge of data center technologies and IT eco-efficiency, said: "Cloud computing is indeed more energy-efficient if the conditions are met." Here are two things you'll need:

● Beginning with the design of the data center, the latest technologies in energy consumption and cooling are considered.

● Equipment in the data center needs to be more energy-efficient. In many data centers, servers have only 5% to 10% utilization, but power consumption is still between 60% and 70% of the maximum - despite the adoption of virtualization. "Equipment utilization is still far below our expectations," Stanley said.

Of course, the company's own data center can do the above two points. However, for the vast majority of industries (except banking), data centers are not the core of the business, and cloud computing providers are able to keep improving. As the CDP pointed out in the report, cloud computing providers not only provide computing resources, customer transactions and e-mail services at low cost, but they also provide energy efficiency not available at the most advanced enterprise data centers. Stanley provides two points in this regard:

● Cloud computing service providers' computing facilities can host a wide range of client workloads, making it easier to efficiently utilize the equipment. Enterprise data centers, whether virtualized or not, carry only a single workload.

● Cloud computing service providers can place their data centers in a cooler and easy-to-use green energy location. For example, large service providers have the ability to sign wind power contracts.

"There is no mystery in a green data center."

Cloud service providers can easily benefit from economies of scale (for the general public and all walks of life, larger). However, Stanley believes that service providers must also pay attention to the above-mentioned technology and ideas. Such as cloud service providers may be dilemma between meeting customer needs and improving system utilization, or data center using non-clean energy (such as coal and nuclear). The corresponding solution is nothing mysterious, in the previous section has been basically covered.

Can cloud computing bring energy savings? What are the benefits compared to self-built data centers? If CIOs are interested in these issues, Stanley's advice is to get cloud service providers to prove these expected benefits directly.

Whether CIO should dominate the business in terms of energy consumption is still a matter of debate. The controversy can be seen in our recent series on energy-saving technologies. Those who hold a positive view believe that CIOs' familiarity with cloud computing and big data makes them an irreplaceable part of an enterprise's energy-saving strategy. The popularity of sensors connects the real world with software, and cloud tools for measuring and analyzing energy consumption enable businesses to track, adjust and even forecast their own carbon emissions. Besides CIO, who else is more suitable to dominate it all?

However, others (including IT experts) that we interviewed believe that the CIO's role in saving energy has been miscalculated. Reducing corporate carbon emissions is not limited to data centers and technology alone. Those who have substantive action in the energy-saving emission reduction, the determination of their actions come from the board of directors and CEO. With the global climate anomaly increasing, companies can no longer evade the corresponding responsibility, and its commitment to saving energy is almost equivalent to a political statement. Moreover, any company-level emission reduction policy is likely to be accompanied by a large marketing campaign. All of the above prove that energy-saving matters can not be dominated by CIOs.

Of course, what CIOs can certainly dominate is the use of cloud services to reduce the carbon footprint of IT and telecom services themselves.