Cloud computing's green benefits

The term cloud, or cloud computing, used as a metaphor for the internet, is based on an infrastructure and business model whereby - rather than being stored on your own device - data, entertainment, news and other products and services are delivered to your device, in real time, from the internet. The creation of the cloud has been a boon both to the companies hosting it and to consumers who now need nothing but a personal computer and internet access to fulfill most of their computing needs.

Google is perhaps the most famous cloud-based company to demonstrate the potential of a cloud platform to drive a hugely successful business model. All of Google’s signature products - Gmail, Google Documents and Google Earth - are delivered from the cloud. Its ambitious project to create a digital library will be entirely hosted by servers storing most of the world’s published work, all in digitized form.


The cloud is growing at a time when climate change and reducing emissions from energy use is of paramount concern. With the growth of the cloud, however, comes an increasing demand for energy.
For all of this content to be delivered to us in real time, virtual mountains of video, pictures and other data must be stored somewhere and be available for almost instantaneous access. That ‘somewhere’ is data centers - massive storage facilities that consume incredible amounts of energy.


Facebook , for example, commissioned a new data centre in Oregon in January 2010 and committed to a power service provider agreement with PacificCorp, a utility that gets the majority of its energy from coal-fired power stations, the United States’ largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. Facebook’s decision to build its own highly-efficient data center in Oregon is not considered to be “Green” as it simply working to maximize output from the cheapest and dirtiest energy source available.

One of the tenets of cloud computing is that you use what you need and you pay for what you use. Amazon S3 and Simple DB and Google App Engine all charge based on storage, bandwidth, and CPU time. Additionally, these services run on shared infrastructure, so you don't have separate physical boxes serving your traffic. This allows Amazon and Google to run at high utilization knowing that—statistically—not all of their users will be hammering the service at once.

To learn how to move your company to cloud computing go to the link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/27/AR2010042703357.html

Reference:


Cindy Waxer(August, 2009)  The Benefits of Cloud Computing from http://www.webhostingunleashed.com/features/cloud-computing-benefits/


Cloud Computing WIKI ANALYSIS from http://www.wikinvest.com/concept/Cloud_Computing

Allentown(June 29, 2009) Cloud computing in Facebook for business from http://www.examiner.com/x-13401-Allentown-Social-Media-Examiner~y2009m6d29-Cloud-computing-in-Facebook-for-business