At this point, many people are familiar with the
term “cloud computing.” It’s one of the big techie buzz words of the
year. Some may even be familiar with the technical advantages and
benefits of cloud computing, such as potentially significant
cost-savings on IT and a virtualized, easily-scalable environment. But
are there potential “green” benefits to operating a web application in
the cloud Amadeus Consulting certainly thinks so.
Amadeus
Consulting, a custom application development company, is pleased to
announce that it has successfully migrated its website to the cloud. This is one step of many already
taken by the company to be conscious of its impact on the environment.
Cloud
computing, sometimes referred to as grid storage, is rapidly becoming
more popular. The ability to store and retrieve mass amounts of data for
a very low cost is allowing for applications to be built faster and
more reliably. It is a relatively new technology that is gaining
popularity, especially among custom software development companies.
“We
are very excited that cloud computing offers hope of being better for
the environment (on the tech side there are lots of reasons why cloud
computing makes sense). But one thing that is understood is the way we
currently run the ever increasing number of data centers isn’t green!
The EPA has estimated that data centers in the US use 61 billion
kilowatt-hours or 1.5% of all electricity consumed and is estimated to
double within 5 years,” says John Basso, Chief Information Officer for
Amadeus Consulting.
So how can cloud computing offer the promise
of less energy consumption? The main advantage has a lot less to do with
the technology directly but rather with the implementation. Cloud
systems by design are decoupled from the physical hardware which offers
the advantage of near instantaneous creation and destruction of a server
(Virtual Server actually). Companies no longer have to scale to their
anticipated max load but rather they can run exactly the right amount of
hardware. By being able to quickly commission and decommission servers
you can increase and decrease your capacity on demand which saves power
by not using electricity for servers sitting idle. This and some other
technical advantages create the opportunity for significant savings as
the industry matures. So in the end it is logical to bet on the solution
that has the possibility of being better vs. staying with one that
isn’t going to improve.
