Behind the Power of the Cloud

It takes up to 7,500 liters of water to manufacture a single pair of jeans. All the work required to soften denim to a texture that consumers will buy, as well as the addition of sandblasting to distress them to satisfy current trends, makes the product a very thirsty and environmentally unfriendly one. But who really thinks about that? No one ever associates a finished product with the resources required to make it, and the same goes for the cloud, a product that seems to have no weight or substance unto itself, save for its presence as a container for data.

We are all fairly comfortable using the cloud to send and receive data. Streaming a movie on YouTube or even holding a multi-person video chat meeting are activities that remain awe-inspiring for many of us who grew up in an era where a rotary dial phone was the only form of interaction and communication. In becoming used to these technologies, we tend to overlook the enormous power demands that such a global system exerts. That’s because it’s largely invisible. We see a PC or an ATM, but we do not see the machinery behind the scenes that ensures these devices perform the way we expect them to.

Cost of Implementation vs. Savings

But all the components in a data communications chain need power to function, and they need it in ever-increasing amounts. This, in turn, places a greater strain on the global environment because, whether people want to admit it or not, all energy comes at a cost.

One conundrum comes when assessing whether the cost of implementing cloud and data technology is greater than the savings such technologies can produce. Progress, including technological innovation, is intended to make things better, not worse, but there have been many times when hidden power demands come as something of a surprise. Patrick Fulop, Vice President Cloud Operations at Thales Digital Identity and Security, speaking on the most recent Security Sessions podcast, Behind the Power of the Cloud, shows how numerous factors must be considered before assessing whether a cloud technology is either costly or frugal in terms of power demands and impact on the environment.

One example he cites in the episode is the computing power required to work a GPS traffic navigation app. The vast amount of data and energy required to maintain real-time information within a crowdsourced traffic app might be balanced out, or at least softened somewhat, by the fact that fewer vehicles will get stuck in traffic jams, burning up fossil fuels or stored electricity, thanks to proactive warnings from the app. This is just one example of where intelligent technology, including AI, can dynamically reroute planes, ships, or products within factories and fulfillment centers, eliminating wasteful habits and reducing energy consumption overall. These actions build on the concepts that have been studied and practiced for nearly a century within the frameworks of Total Quality Management, Lean Six-Sigma, and the Toyota Production System. The potential for the philosophies to become even more efficient further adds to their value.

Using The Shared Responsibility Model

Margaret O’Toole, Worldwide Tech Leader – Sustainability at Amazon Web Services, who was a guest on this same episode, points out that the solutions to the growing demands for power and its adherent environmental costs need not all be automated and mechanical. She highlights the Shared Responsibility Model, which can be applied just as effectively in cloud and data usage as it has been in cybersecurity. She says, in just the same way that AWS has a level of responsibility to decarbonize operations in the data centers they run, customers, too, need to be mindful about consuming only the amount of cloud they need to get their job done. “Just because it’s very easy to use and very elastic doesn’t mean that we should be using it as if it has no cost at all,” she adds.

As another example, the shift toward data centers and the cloud means that companies no longer need to invest heavily in physical servers; they just rent what they need at that moment from large-scale global providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as smaller more local providers. Although the use of data centers is common knowledge, it may be less well-known that working with them in this way helps balance out the energy demands of individual businesses.

Demand Leads To New Possibilities

But such adoption of wholesale data centres still comes with an environmental cost. The shift that has enabled unprecedented growth in the data processing capabilities and storage solutions of companies and organizations still leads to significant power demands, even if these are proportionally lower than what the individual companies added together might generate on their own. According to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), quoted by Patrick in the podcast episode, data centers worldwide consumed about 200 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2020, accounting for around 1% of global electricity use. This figure is expected to rise as the digital transformation accelerates.

However, he adds there are new possibilities for greater efficiencies in the form of Carbon FinOps. Carbon FinOps (Financial Operations) is a relatively new business practice that combines financial operations and sustainability efforts to manage and optimize carbon emissions and their associated costs. This includes carbon accounting, fiscal management, and operational strategies, which help organizations track, manage, and reduce their carbon footprint while aligning these efforts with their financial goals. Its key components include:

1. Carbon Accounting: Systematically measuring and reporting an organization’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
2. Financial Management: Analysing and managing the costs associated with carbon emissions, including carbon taxes, carbon credits, and investments in emission reduction technologies.
3. Operational Efficiency: Implementing strategies to reduce carbon emissions through operational improvements, such as energy efficiency, process optimization, and sustainable sourcing.
4. Regulatory Compliance: Ensuring compliance with environmental regulations and standards related to carbon emissions.
5. Strategic Planning: Integrating carbon management into overall business strategy to drive sustainable growth and competitive advantage.

Growth Matched With Responsibility

This is something that Margaret sees as aligning with the AWS Well-Architected Framework, a procedure that assists organizations in designing and operating secure, reliable, efficient, cost-effective, and sustainable workloads in the AWS Cloud. There are systems that will address the increasing demands for processing power that are now being driven by the AI revolution, ensuring that if organizations come on board, at least, the relentless growth will be intelligently matched with responsibility.