Why the ‘dirty cloud’ is misleading

There’s recently been some backlash against cloud providers, including Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, for having ‘dirty clouds’.

Primarily, the providers have come under fire for the energy sources they use to fuel their data centres. While it’s admirable to advocate clean energy, these companies should also be recognised for remarkable environmental boons brought on by the cloud technology they are enabling - and how this is paving the way for all businesses to ultimately realise even greater green ideals.

For instance, the ideal of the fully paperless office, while not fully realised, has rapidly accelerated to fruition in recent years. This is, in part, thanks to Generation Y entering into the workplace and the cloud-enabled tools they’ve brought with them. Most interestingly, these tools have simultaneously fostered cost savings and greener workplace practices, proving that going green need not be a business expense. For example, the need to print documents to bring on flights or use offsite has been supplanted by cloud platforms that enable mobility without lugging around hard copies.

It doesn’t stop there. There are numerous examples like this, among them:

• Cloud technologies, including email and file-sharing platforms, have nearly eliminated the need to rush the delivery of most documents via overnight airmail and other shipping methods that consume fossil fuels. Then there’s the mentioned benefit of being able to access documents from anywhere via hosted email and cloud platforms, eliminating the need to print documents or make copies to bring when mobile-working.
• Cloud collaboration has made it easy for distributed teams and networks to work across geographies and beyond the firewall via cloud storage, social business and videoconferencing. This in turn has reduced the urgency of travel for business meetings, resulting in a sustainable way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while embracing a global and mobile workforce.
• With the cloud, multiple organisations share the same data centre infrastructure via common providers. This pooling of resources, so to speak, results in improved power usage effectiveness, reducing redundancies associated with every company - no matter its size - hosting its own data in-house.

Of course, becoming truly green is not as simple as adding ‘think before you print’ taglines to email messages and offering cloud-based platforms. The good news is that the workplace is rapidly evolving beyond these green basics. According to a recent study on Gen Y’s environmental awareness, a staggering 96% of those born around the 1980s and onward would like to work in an environmentally aware workplace. On top of that, 70% want recycling bins in the office, 53% want standby devices in all office electrical equipment and 47% would prefer solar panels installed on worksites. While these steps are all commendable, I’d argue that cloud-based technologies will actually have the most prominent role in seeing the fully green office become a sustainable reality because cloud technologies enable the perfect trifecta of business value, employee convenience and green practices.

It goes without saying that we haven’t achieved a fully green cloud yet. But this is the logical next step, especially considering advancements like improvements in power usage effectiveness enabled by a mix of design, procurement and operational measures, including the use of computational fluid dynamics, free cooling and variable frequency drives, and obtaining the majority of power from renewable energy sources. To me, this says that while the utopian ideal of the green office is still not fully achieved, we’re already heading on a powerful trajectory in this direction, largely due to the cloud. The trick is now not to lose sight of the forest for the trees.