By: Irmee Layo| Cloudtimes
Migration to cloud business solutions may actually benefit the company’s financial and energy capabilities. The energy efficiency of the cloud IT infrastructure was confirmed as the result findings of the 6-month research study from the Lawrence Berkeley National’s Computational Research Development (CRD) Laboratory and the Environmental Energy Technologies (EETD) of the Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science were released.
The objective of the Google-funded research was to develop a model that would benefit the public cloud and other researchers in the analysis of the carbon impact and energy use of cloud computing. Among the highlights of the research is the discovery that cloud computing can actually save at least 23 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) from a minimum of 86 million workers in the United States. The conserved energy can already be used to provide the city of Los Angeles with a one year supply of free electricity.
The other benefits of cloud computing include the creation of a greener computing environment, and the provision of a benchmark model in the calculation of the cloud solution’s impact to an existing organization.
The study focused on the three business methods that would be greatly influenced by cloud computing. This includes the customer relationship management software (CRM), email correspondence, and productivity software such as file sharing, word document and spreadsheet.
The new model developed from the research was named as the Cloud Energy and Emissions Research (CLEER) framework. This fresh model will hopefully encourage other researchers to make a follow up study on the new conceptual framework.
