Rajdip Gupta, Founder and Group CEO, Route Mobile
For the longest time, the main purpose of corporations was in maximising profits for all their stakeholders. Organisations of all sizes have been continuously walking away from their approach especially due to the rise of consumer demands which produce environmentally sustainable and eco-friendly products.
As organisations have taken the sustainability pledge, it is important to understand how to reduce the overall environmental impact of businesses through simplifying, reporting and introducing sustainable processes. Organisations are more committed to producing overall shareholder value especially by reducing the maximum toll on the environment and economies. Thus, harnessing the cloud is a great method of ensuring sustainability.
How has cloud become a sustainable ally?
Sustainable cloud technologies are great in providing unique ways for companies to significantly improve their overall commitments to reducing carbon emissions and fostering innovation. As businesses require more hardware, such as round-the-clock power, and enhanced cooling systems for their on-premises servers. A real-life example of this has been in switching from a personal car to sharing public transportation. There has been a significant increase in moving toward cloud computing results that have reduced infrastructure, physical space and the overall energy usage which utilizes cloud-native applications that consumes a lesser number of resources.
The ability of organisations and their potential has also significantly improved especially in terms of supporting remote working capabilities, which has become the new normal. This move has helped to reduce the need of having large office spaces, and reduced carbon dioxide emissions which are associated with an enterprise. Cloud computing has suggested that there are more than 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide between the years 2021 and 2024.
Traditional data centres need to be reinvented for zero waste and greater efficiency along with a vast variety of various benefits. Due to the massive abundance of various resources like human capital, and technological and financial resources – they are the largest cloud providers in building a carbon-neutral cloud. Google introduced the third decade of climate action report that has highlighted how it has become possible for an efficient cloud system. The cloud system is great as it can lead to efficient renewable energy consumption, greener data centres, and easier cloud migration processes with the help of a consumption-oriented approach.
What are the challenges in fulfilling the efficiency promise?
As we have seen a shift towards the cloud as a positive development for various businesses and the environment which is still not completely clean. Organisations are great for improving the environmental impact, especially in terms of transitioning towards digital but they need to always be mindful of their consequences. Organisations will need to have a much more impactful conversation about responsibly incorporating various carbon-conscious digital tools and practices.
IT organisations are steadily moving away from their moving fast, breaking things approach. As data centers utilise enough energy for powering households, there are various organisations such as AWS that are working incredibly hard toward making their cloud infrastructure more energy-efficient than ever before. Certain countries such as Iceland have great conditions that increase overall IT sustainability which can contribute to the green agenda.
Decoding the green cloud optimisation
The transformational power of the cloud is quite undeniable but it is important that the cost does not outweigh organisations as it costs the planet a fortune. Traditional data centres are not environmentally sustainable with wasteful power consumption and there is a greater reliance on non-renewable energy. Building power-efficient, green data centres is necessary for reducing the overall carbon footprint of organisations and bringing it to near-zero levels.
Testimonials from various MNCs such as Emirates Group, Yedpay, Under Armour, Capital One and HCL’s shift from on-premises towards the cloud has resulted in annual savings, reduced costs and much more. In certain cases, cloud sustainability can be achieved through harmonisation and other important factors. Cloud adoption can help drive organisations towards growing at a sustainable rate with improved scalability along with enhanced operational efficiency.
