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Businesses that choose to run applications in the cloud can reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions by 30 percent or more versus running those same applications on their own IT infrastructure.
Large cloud data centers can lower overall energy use due to economies of scale and operational efficiencies beyond what corporate IT departments can achieve. These findings, from a study commissioned by Microsoft and conducted by Accenture and WSP Environment & Energy, demonstrate cloud computing’s potential to reduce the carbon footprint from running business applications.
The analysis focused on Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, commonly-used Microsoft applications for e-mail, content sharing and customer relationship management versus their cloud-based equivalents. The assessment found that results vary by size of organization, with small organizations likely to experience 90 percent or more carbon footprint reduction by using a Microsoft shared cloud environment instead of their own local servers.
By moving business applications to cloud services offered by Microsoft or other providers, IT decision-makers can effectively “outsource” their IT efficiency investments while helping their company achieve its sustainability goals.
November 4, 2010