Deploying data center operations to the cloud can cut carbon emissions and energy use by 30 percent for large organizations, and by much more for smaller operations, according to a lifecycle analysis sponsored by Microsoft.
The study, entitled “
The analysis suggested that small deployments of about 100 users in an organization can cut energy use and carbon emissions by 90%. For medium-sized deployments of about 1,000 users, that number doubled or even tripled. Large deployments of about 10,000 users to the cloud registered a 30% to 60% cut in emissions and use.
In one example, the study noted that a large consumer goods company reduced carbon emissions by 32% by moving 50,000 email users to the cloud.
The main reasons areas of reduction from the cloud were server provisioning and utilization, multi-tenancy, and, with the biggest impact, overall data center efficiency.
Rob Bernard, Microsoft chief environmental strategist, said the analysis gives backbone to a long-standing belief about energy savings from cloud use.
“The IT industry had this nagging question – as more and more services move to the cloud, do they consume more or less energy?” Bernard said in a company news release. “This study found that you can migrate existing infrastructure to the cloud and see not only growth in productivity but a reduction in energy consumption for those services.”
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