September 16, 2011 8:30 AM

We’ve been discussing the impact of Cloud Computing on cutting carbon emissions since its inception – but now that cloud services are being fully embraced from individuals to business enterprise, we are really starting to see the overall financial and environmental benefits.

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) has been released as a comprehensive new study that outlines and predicts Cloud Computing business models as the IT solution of the 21^st century. The report serves as a forecast study to assess the financial and sustainability benefits for a company that is opting for cloud computing services, such as infrastructure-as-a-service, software-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service. It states that as companies fully utilize the Cloud services, a total of $12.3 billion will be saved in energy costs and 85.7 metric tonnes of CO2 will be reduced annually by the year 2020.

“The carbon emissions-reducing potential of cloud computing is a thrilling breakthrough, allowing companies to maximize performance, drive down costs, reduce inefficiency and minimize energy use – and therefore carbon emissions – all at the same time.” CDP executive chairman Paul Dickinson

This is big news as the Department of Energy indicates that data centres may be consuming 3% of total North American electricity today. This report forecasts that companies are planning to accelerate their adoption of cloud computing from a current 10% to 69% of their IT spend by 2020.

In essence, the traditional IT model that houses and manages infrastructure in a dedicated office server room is largely being dismissed and replaced by a consolidated Cloud model.

Along with the well-documented environmental impacts, many other advantages are clear:

Efficiency – enables companies to provide new services and server capacity at the drop of a hat.

Cost-Savings- the dedicated IT model is costly with labour, maintenance, and energy consumption considerations. The Cloud model consolidates and makes better use of hardware and helps to lower the cost of support and IT resources.

Scalability-Pay as you go and as you grow. Most Cloud services only require business to pay for the capacity used, reducing costs overall.

Cloud Computing is the IT investment of the future, and that’s good news for growing businesses in this economy and the prospective of environmental sustainability.

(Read the full CDP Project Report and Case Studies)

Blogger Profile: Christine Sheppard
Christine Sheppard is the marketing and communications voice at Atum Corporation – a VPS hosting and IT Solutions Company. Atum is a Canadian leader in VPS solutions and virtualization and Christine draws upon her inherent interest in the advance of new computer technology to discuss topics in Cloud Computing, Virtualization and emerging business trends. www.twitter.com/AtumIT

Posted by Sue Ansell at September 16, 2011 8:30 AM

Categories: Cloud computing

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