III International Conference Industrial Engineering And Environmental Protection 2013 (IIZS 2013)

October 30th, 2013, Zrenjanin, Serbia

__________________________________________________________________________________________

THE IMPACT OF CLOUD COMPUTING IMPLEMENTATION ON A

COMPANYS ECO POLICY
Vladimir oli1, Savina oli2, Vinja Ognjenovi2
1
NIS Gazprom Neft, Novi Sad
2
University of Novi Sad, Technical Faculty Mihajlo Pupin, Zrenjanin
e-mail: colicv88@gmail.com
Abstract: As an emerging technology, Cloud computing poses important questions about its environmental
sustainability. While the extent literature gives numerous examples of financial benefits obtained through Cloud
computing, its energy efficiency has not been analyzed in sufficient detail. Utilizing large shared virtualized
datacenters, Cloud computing can offer large energy savings. However, Cloud services can also increase the
Internet traffic and its growing information database which could decrease such energy savings. Thus, this paper
explores the environmental sustainability of Cloud computing by analyzing various technologies and mechanism
that support this goal.
Key words: Cloud Computing, Sustainability, Energy Efficiency, CO2 reduction

INTRODUCTION
Being one of the newest trends in the world of information technology, cloud computing gives rise to
the following strives, present in almost every aspect of todays life: to be cheaper, faster and greener.
In order to be more competitive and therefore successful in any aspect of modern life, one needs to do
things at a lower cost, greater speed compared to the others and with the least possible negative impact
on the environment. This is the reason why cloud computing is being rapidly implemented in
companies across the globe.
However, as [7] state, the growing demand of Cloud infrastructure has drastically increased the energy
consumption of data centres, which has become a critical issue. High energy consumption both
reduces the profit margin of Cloud providers and leads to high carbon emissions, which is completely
opposite to green.
Hence, this negative impact needs to be minimized through energy-efficient solutions. These solutions
can be designed only after a deep analysis of Cloud, with respect to their power efficiency.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
Company Cloud Benefits
Business people are becoming more and more aware of the amount of energy IT systems consume and
their environmental impact nowadays. This is the reason why the business world is increasingly seeing
the implementation of a greener solution - Cloud computing. The idea behind this notion is storing
data not locally, but on an external, outsourced server. This practically means that the need for bulky
hardware and expensive software does not exist anymore. The advantages are numerous for an
organization environmental footprint of using cloud computing, as compared to having an internal IT
system, can be reduced by up to 90%; moreover, it leads to the elimination of hardware obtaining,
administering and maintaining, which provides great cost reduction. Apart from that, the problem of
space lack and cooling is avoided in this way. Technology efficiency is greater in Clouds than in
traditional data centers due to idle time optimization.
Cloud service providers need to keep their cost low. Therefore they need to ensure there is no energy
waste through focusing on performance. In fact, as [5] states, they provide maximum of services with
the least resources (including energy), which in the final instance is the basis of being green.

III International Conference Industrial Engineering And Environmental Protection 2013 (IIZS 2013)
October 30th, 2013, Zrenjanin, Serbia
__________________________________________________________________________________________

When comparing Cloud computing to in-house data centers, one can see that utilization rates in shared
data centers can be, most frequently, around 60 to 70%, while at the same time they amount only 5 to
10% in most corporations. Therefore, the shared resources and energy costs lead to maximum cost
reduction through increased energy efficiency. On the other hand, with in-house data centers,
companies may not be able to afford to keep upgrading to energy-efficient equipment, lacking space
and finances. Anyway, they will often be forced to purchase more machines than necessary in order to
handle peak data loads. In Cloud computing option, these resources can be allocated dynamically
where needed.
Cloud and Environmental Sustainability
As it could be seen from the previous chapter, the notion of Cloud computing evokes the thoughts of
sustainability, greenness, and significant energy savings. Indeed, one of the main driver technologies
for energy efficient Clouds is virtualization, which allows significant improvement in Cloud energy
efficiency by leveraging the economies of scale associated with large number of organizations sharing
the same infrastructue. In this way, companies can gain high savings in the form of space,
management, and energy.
On the other hand, commercialization of thousands of simultaneous e-commerce transactions and
millions of Web queries a day, today known as Cloud computing, brought to an alarming rise in
internet usage during the last decade. Architecturally, this trend is supported through large-scale
datacentres, which consolidate thousands of servers with cooling, strorage infrastructure and network
systems. The basic idea behind it is that the data in use are not stored locally, i.e. on hard drive of
individual user, but on a remotely located server owned by so-called cloud vendor. In fact, most
Internet users nowadays already use cloud computing, being completely unaware of that fact (e.g.
web-based e-mail). This is the reason why, at a first glance, Cloud computing looks green.
However, when transferred to the business field, its implications on both companys profit and
environment still need to be questioned. Traditionally, companies needed to invest great deal of capital
and time in acquisition and maintenance of IT resources. Cloud computing shifts this approach from
owning to subscribing, by providing access to scalable infrastructure and services on-demand.
Therefore, the issue of purchasing, configuring, administering and maintaining own computer
infrastructure is no longer present now users can store, access, and share any amount of information
on cloud, which the vendor is resposible for. Thus, the companies can focus on their core
competencies, while the vendors provide all the necessary services to maintain the infrastucture
working.
Not so Green a Cloud
As already stated, providing Cloud services to companies significantly reduces client companys costs
regarding manipulation of own IT resources. However, a question needs to be posed: is Cloud
introduction a real solution or the problem is merely being shifted from the core to the outsourcing
company?
In fact, while on one hand this significantly reduces company-purchasers cost, on the other, it
increases the carbon emission to a critical level (Figure 1). Therefore, various elements of Clouds
which contribute to the total energy consumption need to be revised, as well as the more efficient
solutions to be provided in order to make Cloud which is factually green.

III International Conference Industrial Engineering And Environmental Protection 2013 (IIZS 2013)
October 30th, 2013, Zrenjanin, Serbia
__________________________________________________________________________________________

Figure 1. Cloud and environmental sustainability1

Due to the high-level energy consumption (estimated to 2% by [ 6]), the carbon emission by Cloud
infrastructures has become a key environmental concern. According to a report published by the
European Union, a decrease in emission volume of 15-30% is required before year 2020 in order to
keep the global temperature increase below 2 C. [ 4] observe that the Cloud phenomenon deepens the
problem of carbon emissions and global warming. According to this source, the main problem is that
the collective demand for computing resources is expected to further increase dramatically in the next
several years. This means that even the most efficiently built datacenter will only mitigate, but not
eliminate the harmful emissions of carbon dioxide. One of the main problems here is the idle time. In
fact, no company ever uses 100% of its IT resources, 100% of time which practically means that the
great deal of power is being spent inefficiently. Apart from that, this problem is aggravated by the fact
that the cloud vendors seek to reduce their electricity cost, but not the carbon emission as well.
Efforts to Make Clouds Green
Even though various components were made efficient in terms of power and performance, the unified
picture still does not exist. If the file sizes transferred to and from cloud are large, the network will
become a major contributor to energy consumption, leading to the state where it is still better to run an
application locally, from hard drives, than from clouds. In fact, various research strives focused on
individual components of Cloud computing, while neglecting the effects of the other, which gives the
results not suitable for overall energy efficiency. Therefore, a unified solution should be proposed so
as to achieve Green Cloud computing in the real sense of the word.
The ultimate goal of Green Cloud architecture is to make cloud ecological from both user and
providers perspective. It is, as [7] propose, done by introducing a middleware Green Broker that
manages the selection of the greenest Cloud provider to serve the users request. He does it by
obtaining the information on current status of energy parameters for using various Cloud services from
Carbon Emission Directory (which maintains all the data on Cloud services energy efficiency).
Afterwards, the Green Broker calculates the carbon emission of all the Cloud providers who are
offering the requested service and based on that, selects the set of services that will result in minimal
carbon emission.
The design of this architecture is aimed to keep track of the overall energy usage when serving a users
request. Its two main parts are Carbon Emission Directory and Green Cloud offers, which track energy
1

Source: Bianchini, R., Rajamony, R., Power and Energy Management for Server Systems, Computer, Vol.37, No. 11, pp.
68-74, 2004.

III International Conference Industrial Engineering And Environmental Protection 2013 (IIZS 2013)
October 30th, 2013, Zrenjanin, Serbia
__________________________________________________________________________________________

efficiency of each Cloud provider, stimulating them to make their service green at the same time
(Figure 2).

Figure 2. Green Cloud Architecture2

This was proved through several individual researches. For instance, a case study conveyed by [7],
focused on IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) providers who offer IT resources to execute users HPC
applications. Its results show that the green policies reduce the carbon emission by almost 20% in
comparison to profit-based ones, having the minimal effect on the providers profit at the same time.
However, this cannot be achieved only by improving the efficiency of equipment, but through making
Cloud computing usage more carbon efficient from both user and providers perspective. Cloud
providers need to shift towards using renewable energy sources and give priority to their computation
resources energy efficiency in comparison with mere cost minimization.
When transferred to the private cloud model, used for internal organizational users (and thus provided
to a smaller number of users), the provider needs to size its ICT infrastructure for the peak usage. This
practically means that the private cloud providers suffer greater load variations, since their users, most
often a companys employees, will probably use it significantly less during night, compared to day,
and weekends, compared to weekdays. This is the reason why this type of cloud can save energy by
optimizing the infrastructure to run the load with the lowest energy consumption, meanwhile
preserving the service level agreements with respect to their users.
CONCLUSION
This paper explores the issue of Cloud computing, with regard to its impact on the environment. As it
could have been seen, the researchers opinions vary, mostly due to the lack of a general overview of
cloud energy efficiency. While on one hand numerous researchers praise the energy- and cost-saving
nature of cloud, viewed from the customer companys position, on the other, many of them focus on
the actual energy consumption by Cloud servers. To sum up, both of these viewpoints need to be taken
into account so as to acquire a complete picture.
Cloud computing already does have a green lining, by providing computation resources to many
customers, which increases their utilization rates. Nevertheless, in order to handle peak times and
2

Saurabh, K. G., Rajkumar, B., Green Cloud Computing and Environmental Sustainability, p.20, 2011.

III International Conference Industrial Engineering And Environmental Protection 2013 (IIZS 2013)
October 30th, 2013, Zrenjanin, Serbia
__________________________________________________________________________________________

simultaneous requests from multiple customers, these servers need to be powerful and therefore they
consume a great deal of energy. This all can be tracked in the sense of its carbon footprint, which is
actually the first step towards making Cloud technology greener. The following step is, as proposed, to
introduce the middle tier, which role would be to manage the customers requests towards Cloud
providers, with regard to greenness. Specifically, this means that, having information on current use of
cloud providers resources, the middle tier decides which server to send the users request to,
according to the usage. The server which is less used at the moment will be assigned for the task and
therefore, less electric power shall be used. In the final instance, the carbon footprint of the cloud will
be reduced, which is the main goal.
The future research direction should be in the sense of the middle tier request directing speed, since at
this point a problem is likely to occur the final users requests need to be solved, obeying the green
policy at the same time. After addressing this issue, the following period make Cloud have a factually
positive impact on companies eco policy.
REFERENCES

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