Moving Computer Services to the Cloud Promises Significant Energy Savings

June 11, 2013

Posted today by our colleague Jon Bashor in the Computing Research Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory:

A six-month study led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) with funding from Google has found that moving common software applications used by 86 million U.S. workers to the cloud could save enough electricity annually to power Los Angeles for a year. The study, conducted with Northwestern University, is summarized in a report issued today (Tuesday, June 11, 2013).

The report looks at three common business applications — email, customer relationship management software, or CRM, and bundled productivity software (spreadsheets, file sharing, word processing, etc.). Moving these software applications from local computer systems to centralized cloud services could cut information technology energy consumption by up to 87 percent — about 23 billion kilowatt-hours. This is roughly the amount of electricity used each year by all the homes, businesses and industry in Los Angeles.

Read the rest at the URL below.

Author

Jon Bashor