Moving workloads to public cloud computing infrastructure also presents the opportunity to dramatically reduce the environmental footprint of IT operations. Climate change and its effects fix attention at resource efficiency as an important part of sustainability, and is currently growing in importance to businesses. In 2018 86% of the companies in the S&P 500 index published a sustainability report, up from only 20% in 2011.

As a leading provider in the cloud service sector, our partner Amazon Web Services is contributing to the world’s green transition. The company is pioneering sustainable cloud computing while helping other businesses minimize their environmental impact.

AWS focus is to transition its operations to renewable energy and by 2025 it aims to power all its activities with 100% renewable energy. As of 2021, AWS has reached 85% renewable energy usage across its global infrastructure and it’s currently the world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy. AWS has invested in several wind and solar projects around the globe generating tons of renewable energy annually. Projects like this are powering AWS operations while also feeding clean energy into the broader electric grid, contributing to a reduction in overall carbon emissions.

Carbon footprint transparency

Understanding one’s carbon footprint is the first step toward reducing it. AWS has developed the AWS Carbon Footprint tool, which offers customers detailed insights into the carbon emissions associated with their AWS usage. This transparency fosters accountability and encourages businesses to adopt more sustainable cloud computing practices.

Quick steps to improve Cloud Computing Well-Architected Sustainability

Environmental sustainability is a shared responsibility between customers and AWS. AWS is responsible for sustainability of the cloud, delivering efficient, shared infrastructure, water stewardship and sourcing renewable power. Customers are responsible for sustainability in the cloud, optimizing workloads and resource utilization. Some great solutions to meet the sustainability objectives is to scale your cloud computing infrastructure to continually match demand and often confirm that you use only the minimum resources required to support your users. Align service levels to your customer needs and position resources to limit the network required for users and applications to consume them. Remove unused assets and finally provide your team members with devices that support their needs and minimize their sustainability impact.

In terms of software and architecture you should implement patterns for performing load smoothing and maintaining high utilization of deployed resource to minimize the resources consumed. Often revise patterns and architecture to consolidate under-utilized components.

Regarding data, use storage technologies and configurations that best support the business value of the data. Lifecycle data to more efficient, less performant storage when there is less requirements and to conclude delete data that’s not required.

To help managing and optimizing the cloud computing infrastructure, having a Managed Services Provider is the way to go. While it is certainly overwhelming to migrate your entire workload to the cloud, both in terms of architecting and guaranteeing a successful migration, as a Managed Services Provider Magic Beans can assist you in the process by leveraging the AWS Professional Services while also guaranteeing the best solution, in terms of performance, cost and sustainability.

Conclusion

Cloud computing offers a lot of benefits over traditional on-premises infrastructures. Cloud providers like AWS significantly reduce the energy consumption per unit of computing output thanks to higher server utilization rates and energy efficiencies. Finally, AWS’s scalability allows businesses to match the compute resources with demand, avoiding energy wastage from over-provisioning.

AWS is showing us how cloud computing can be environment friendly, thanks to its dedication to renewables, efficient data centers, and recycling tech. AWS’s commitment to sustainable practices is setting the bar for the future of the tech industry, steering us towards a more environmentally conscious path.