In the past decade, we have seen the rise in both the quantity and magnitude of data centres around the world. This can of course be attributed to the overwhelming success of ‘The Cloud’. Though even with its success, there has been a constant growth in opposition of people who see the threat of increased energy consumption and pollution.
Remarkably, as time has passed, these centres have become incredibly energy efficient. A new study found that that even though cloud computing has leaped 600% from 2010 to 2018, energy consumption has only risen by 6%. We can attribute this success to companies such as Google and Intel, whose advancements in chipset designs, custom cooling solutions and other technology has greatly improved the overall performance to energy consumption ratios.
Although this is a wonderful success in the field, we can’t deny the fact that the evolution of technology does take time and as a result, has several draw backs. For example, between 2005 and 2010, while Cloud technology was emerging, data centre energy consumption rose by a staggering 600% (ref: New York Times).
So why the massive reduction in consumption? How were we able to keep it to a mere 6% increase compared to the 600% in previous years? Referring to the study from the New York Times, data centres migrated from smaller holdings over to larger, more robust centres hosted by giants like Google, Microsoft and Amazon. These giants are constantly under global scrutiny and along with their fixation on reducing expenditure, they are always innovating their way to improved efficiency and lower pollution.
Urs Hölzle – Technical infrastructure VP at Google
According to Urs Hölzle, technical infrastructure VP at Google, the company increased savings on energy and expenditure by designing highly efficient processing units and using machine learning to improve cooling. Other forms of energy sources such as solar farms offset energy usage. As it stands, data centres consume around 1% of the world’s electricity.
So why the Cloud Hosting?
At Risk Decisions, we have seen a large increase in cloud hosting preferences. More and more of our clients are making the leap form inhouse systems to robust cloud computing. At Risk Decisions, we make use of the Microsoft Azure Cloud Platform which comes with a multitude of benefits.
- A secure and dedicated cloud environment.
- A future ready platform capable of propelling your organisation forward.
- Reduced costs associated with internal IT management.
- Ever evolving and improving security.
- Effective disaster recovery procedures.
- Increased up-times with 24hr dedicated support from Azure.
Some quick facts for Cloud Hosting in 2020.
- 90% of organisations are on the cloud. (ref: 451 Research)
- Cloud data centres are estimated to process 94% of workloads by the end 2021 (ref: Cisco)
- Cloud infrastructure spending surpassed $80 billion in 2018 and is steadily increasing. (ref: Canalys)
The final question is this. Why are you not taking advantage of the cloud?
For more information regarding cloud services at Risk Decisions, please feel free to contact us.
