Adopting Cloud Computing to Green Your Enterprise

by Tricia Reilly

At a recent Zuora board meeting, one of our board members, unable to find a paper cup in the kitchenette, returned to the board room mug in hand noting how ‘green’ a company we are.

At Zuora, we take a hands-on approach to efficient resource management and reducing our environmental impact. And although we strive to reduce waste, encourage recycling, and carpool as much as possible, making your business environmentally friendly can be a bit of a challenge.

The good news for us is that leveraging cloud computing services, running a subscription business, and implementation of SaaS projects all offer great ways to green your IT department.

But what’s good for the Earth can also be good for business:

• New “green” data centers equipped to handle cloud computing are finding ways to operate better, faster and more efficiently than in-house operations because it’s all they do. Better energy efficiency means a reduced carbon footprint.
• Subscription services delivered online are inherently green because you only pay for what you need as capacity is shared across multiple customer instances to reduce overall power, hardware, and software components.
• By leveraging services in the cloud, you free up valuable internal resources to focus on developing solutions that you can actually sell. And that means the kind of green you can take to the bank.

These points prove that greening your company can be an amazingly lucrative business option. If we are aware of the possibilities, we can make environmental consciousness an everyday reality of our corporate culture.

We are making progress but it’s really important to understand that everything from printing, faxing, and paper waste to use of computer hardware, data centers, and electricity impact how green your business is.

I can think of some innovative ways Zuora uses the cloud to reduce our carbon footprint: Google Docs, WebEx and eFax are just a few. What are some ways that your company uses cloud computing or SaaS projects to make your company greener?

Comments

[Guy Marion]

Great post! It's actually pretty amazing how Green your SaaS infrastructure is. For example, let's say the average corporate server, running 24x7x365, consumes 6 MWh each year (for a breakdown, see http://www.energytoday.com.au/contentid65.html). If a multi-tenant SaaS application delivers 30 - 40 customer instances on a single server (that might otherwise be installed on 30 - 40 individual servers), then this saves 175 - 235 MWh of carbon-powered energy each year.

Our company is looking at a number of innovative ways to be greener (and make our customers greener)- see http://cvsdude.com/green.html.

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