Although powering a huge datacentre may not appear to be very ‘green’, the environmental costs of cloud computing have been assessed by Sustainablebrands.com and found to be of benefit to those businesses looking to reduce the impact on the environment.
Going Green
Fewer machines, efficient climate control, reuse of generated heat, and many more environmental benefits can be delivered from cloud computing. Here are ten cloud providers who are ‘going green’.
EVRY Cloud Services – Based across Scandinavia, this cloud hosting company offers many excellent services through its green datacentres. Powered by hydropower and operating in accordance with ISO 14001 Environmental Standard Guidelines, this Nordic datacentre is one of the greenest in the world.
NetApp – Headquartered in California and ranked in the Fortune 500, NetApp was founded in 1992 and is a cloud data services and data management company. It recently purchased the Icelandic cloud data company Greenqloud, and as such inherited Greenqloud’s excellent environmental processes. Further to this, NetApp conforms to ISO 14001:2015, is Energy Star recognised, and holds LEEED Certifications for three of its buildings.
Google – Google’s entire infrastructure is carbon-neutral, which is a pretty impressive feat considering the size and computing power at which the company’s datacentre operates. 35-per cent of the energy that Google uses for its datacentres comes from renewable sources, and the company is aiming to improve that further in the future.
Microsoft Azure – Microsoft Azure offers a set of cloud services through the company’s managed datacentres. The company’s datacentres and cloud platform services are carbon-neutral; using renewable sources for its energy needs. In fact, Microsoft is one of the U.S.’ largest green power purchaser.
CloudSigma – As well as adhering to the highest possible security standards, Swiss cloud service provider Cloudsigma is also carbon-neutral across all its datacentres. It was one of the first datacentres to achieve carbon-neutral status and is one of the most power-efficient in Europe, too.
Apple iCloud – Suited for home and business users, Apple’s iCloud uses renewable energy across its entire business – specifically the iCloud datacentres – as well as greener materials in its manufacturing and building processes. In 2015, 93-per cent of the company’s energy use came from renewable sources, and 100-per cent of the datacentre’s energy use is clean.
Dediserve – Dediserve is one of the biggest cloud service providers in the world, operating fifteen datacentres from around the world. This Irish company has taken great steps to reduce its environmental impact over the years; ensuring that its power consumption is considerably less than a conventional in-house server setup.
IBM SmartCloud – IBM’s SmartCloud datacentres are exceptionally environmentally friendly. Just a few years ago, the European Commission awarded ‘Participants in Datacentre Efficiency’ to twenty-seven of the company’s datacentres. So as well as offering enterprise-level cloud services, the company is also actively lowering its carbon footprint.
Rackspace – As well as offering excellent cloud services, Rackspace also operates its datacentres from 100-per cent renewable sources. The company is also continually looking to reduce its environmental impact further through the use of greener materials.
Akamai – Akamai’s delivery servers, consisting of thousands spread across 126 countries, is committed to lowering its environmental impact by using renewable fuels. The company has plans to significantly reduce its energy impact by 2020 and lower its carbon emissions to less than 2015 levels.
