Microsoft, Accenture and WSP Environment & Energy Study Shows Significant Energy and Carbon Emissions Reduction Potential From Cloud Computing
Large
datacenters, like those run by Microsoft, benefit from economies of
scale and operational efficiencies beyond what corporate IT departments
can achieve. Benefits become even more significant for a small business
moving to the cloud, where the net energy and carbon savings can be more
than 90 percent.
The study results focused on
three widely deployed and commonly used Microsoft applications for
e-mail, content sharing and customer relationship management. Customers
can choose to install each application on their own IT infrastructure or
use the corresponding Microsoft cloud application. The study results
suggest that choosing the cloud option can enable a significant
reduction in carbon emissions. While the findings represent an
illustrative case for selected Microsoft applications, it is likely that
similar advantages can be observed across many applications and cloud
service providers.