English | EN The cloud as disruptive move toward Sustainability
Aug 14, 2014
The cloud today is THE choice in terms of services, infrastructure, virtualization, etc… We can find plenty of features that are responding to business needs and list all the benefits that this can provide: achieve economies of scale, reduce costs, increase flexibility, etc…
Besides the technological advantages, there is also something else that can provide a different prospective about the cloud, for us as well as for our clients.
The concept of “green computing” is topical today and events and conferences are taking place every year worldwide. In 2010, the IEEE Computer Society sponsored the first International Green Computing Conference in Chicago with the title of “Sustainable computing and computing for Sustainability” (November 2014 will be in Texas), where the main topics threaded were energy efficiency, optimization of the algorithms for energy consumption, and carbon footprint.
Many companies – Nestle, Adidas, Siemens, to name few – have already made the choice of sustainability, and this doesn’t mean just a green approach. Sustainability is based on what we call the triple bottom line, where people, profit, and planet are linked together, and where the business meets the ethics.
How can the cloud help with this? The answer stands in the fact that it can provide to our clients not only advantages in terms of technology, efficiency, and cost savings, but also a real chance in terms of carbon footprint.
In 2009. former Microsoft CEO Ballmer committed that Microsoft would reduce 30% its carbon footprint by 2012. This goal has been achieved by investing both in people and technology. Microsoft made each division responsible for their carbon footprint emissions, but also major efforts have been done with the cloud innovations. This is why Microsoft asserts that moving business applications to the cloud can reduce the carbon footprint by 30% for normal companies and by 90% for small companies.
Many other companies (Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc…) leverage the cloud to achieve a better impact in terms of emissions and carbon footprint.
As technology leaders, we have to always keep in mind that the cube of technology has multiple faces and that sustainability is something that matters today more than ever. Our clients are trying to achieve a real Common Shared Value that goes beyond the simple technology and being prepared on this will help them and will help us.[i]
[i] Part of this text has been already presented as assessment of Marketing Management exam for Robert Kennedy College, MBA in Leadership and Sustainability
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