Is that Cloud white or Green?: No simple answer says Fujitsu

Peter Dinham
Thursday, 02 June 2011 21:24

IT Industry - Market

Cloud computing is touted as one of the ways Australian businesses, organisations and government can help the Green cause and the challenge of reducing carbon emissions to give us, and the rest of the world, a cleaner and more environmentally-friendly future. However, is the Cloud really so Green or is that really just a load of carbon laced fluff?

Certainly, at face value, it seems that the Cloud can play its part in taking business and industry, and the ordinary consumer of IT services and solution, to the Green nirvana. 

But, before you plunge in and take-up one of the myriad of Cloud offerings from a raft of vendors, with the idea of reducing your carbon footprint and doing your bit for the sustainability of your company and the planet, you need to take stock of a whole lot of issues.   It seems your Cloud decision may or may not deliver the Green outcome you want unless you seek out objective, independent advice on the best way to go.

For instance, Fujitsu, a Cloud solutions vendor itself, in a just released white paper, raises a raft of questions which it says business and industry will need to take into account in its 'green' decision-making.

Fujitsu says that  'if the number of vendors now offering Cloud services and the number of customers now buying and using cloud are any gauge, then the Cloud industry 'has now arrived', and that 2010 appears to have become the 'tipping-point' for Cloud.'

On the question of the Green cloud, Fujitsu says that 'in addition to the much-touted cost and agility benefits to customers of adopting the Cloud model, Cloud vendors and other proponents increasingly cite environmental benefits as a further incentive for take-up of their services, in particular reduction of the carbon footprint of the customers' ICT infrastructure and support services. In short, Cloud is Greener than other ways of deploying and operating ICT services.'

However, is 'Cloud really so Green? Is it yet delivering on its Green claims,' asks Fujitsu.

In the white paper titled - Fujitsu Cloud Sustainability - Is The Cloud Green - the company makes the point that 'Cloud is clearly a complex (and evolving) concept, which makes objective comparison, on virtually any grounds, between Cloud offerings from different vendors, or between Cloud and alternative computing models, not a simple exercise.

'From a sustainability perspective, an important broad distinction to make is between the Private and Public Cloud models. A Public Cloud, due to its economies of scale and inherent high degree of infrastructure sharing between many different customers, is likely to yield bigger energy/carbonsavings than a Private Cloud.

'These two basic models can each be further divided into sub- models, which can differ in their environmental characteristics.

'For example, an Internal Private Cloud (hosted in the customers own data center) may be a less efficient option than a Hosted Private Cloud (hosted in the Cloud vendor's data center) as the latter data center would be expected to be more optimized.'!!!

What's more, Fujitsu predicts that the ratio of Private Cloud to Public Cloud implementations is likely to change over time in favour of the latter (public cloud) 'as customers' current security concerns over Public Cloud are allayed.'

iTWire notes that it's not only Fujitsu that's thinking about the greenness of the Cloud.