Think of all the photos being uploaded on Facebook daily (100 million), or the many data files needing to be recorded digitally and stored somewhere, and the gaming and video streaming. All of these actions take electricity, power, and consumption. While “being green” is nothing new, being green in the IT sector is a whole other story. With the advent of cloud computing and major technological advances, managing energy consumption and efficiency is becoming a concern among professionals. Many companies like to boast about their sustainability incentives and letting their consumers know they are environmentally responsible. But being green isn’t just about saving the world, it can also save you money.
Back in 2005, data centers accounted for 1.2% of the total U.S. energy consumption. This may not seem like a lot, but you can only imagine what would happen if the technology does continue to improve and get larger. Mostly, no one wants to spend millions of dollars cooling their equipment and maintenance it. “Cloud computing will involve increasing size and capacity of data centers and of networks, but if properly managed, cloud computing can potentially lead to overall energy savings,” says a report called Green Cloud Computing: Balancing Energy in Processing, Storage, and Transport.
Just like sustainability focuses on a holistic approach to conserving anything from the environment to health, energy consumption among cloud computing must not only analyze the front end, but also the back end as well as everything in between. Previous studies have only focused on the energy used at the data centers, but the above study focused on all parts of cloud computing. The report states: “While it is important to understand how to minimize energy consumption in data centers that host cloud computing services, it is also important to consider the energy required to transport data to and from the end-user and the energy consumed by the end-user interface.”
The report found the highest energy consumption was found in transportation, storage, and processing for both private and public cloud services. Transportation was even higher energy costs in public clouds.
Recent changes to cloud computing equipment have improved energy efficiency tremendously. Equipment like servers, switches, and routers has more energy-saving options. “State of the art router efficiency is improving by 20% per annum.” Therefore, router energy consumption per bit will decrease by 15% each annum.
While some believe cloud computing can cost billions in kilowatts, others propose cloud computing can reduce carbon emissions immensely. By the year 2020, it is supposed U.S. businesses can save $12.3 billion.
Tanaza brought all of the advantages of cloud computing in the wireless management market: with Tanaza you can manage your WiFi Access Points from the cloud, with no need for any hardware controller. As it’s a multi-vendor solution, you won’t need to replace your existing access points, saving even more money. Tanaza is currently compatible with Netgear, TP-Link, D-Link, and Ubiquiti access points, but more are coming soon. If you have one of the supported devices, you can try it for free and start reducing gas emission, thanks to the unique multi-vendor WiFi controller that is also hardware (and emission) free.