Pascal Jaillon, Senior Vice President, Product, OVHcloud US, says a multi-cloud strategy allows companies to leverage any number of services and prioritize the best cloud provider ecosystem for the job.
The many sustainability efforts adopted by cloud providers are greatly impacting an organization’s ability to reduce its carbon footprint.
What started as simple metrics around application performance and utilization has evolved into a much wider view that includes measuring and analyzing the efficiency of nearly every aspect of a data center’s operations and supply chainand recently expanded to include important steps toward operating more sustainably in the cloud through virtualization and AI provisioning.
Cloud providers have reached a critical point in the path toward sustainability where their efforts are merging into a larger, and more meaningful, shared responsibility for sustainability with their customers. The overarching alignment on sustainable outcomes is driving the development of best practices in IT and shifting the conversation traditionally associated with sustainability in cloud computing from expectations, potential advantages, and anecdotal references to guarantees and achieving the maximum possible reduction of environmental impacts.
As we settle into this new era in cloud computing, having a wholistic view of environmental responsibility is crucial, for two primary reasons:
- Businesses will increasingly evaluate providers based on their use of renewable energy, next generation cooling technologies and overall sustainability initiatives. According to Gartner, by 2028, procurement teams will have sustainability as a top five factor as part of vendor procurement – rising to over 50%, up from less than 25% in 2023.
- Businesses will increasingly rely on cloud providers to offer standardized and verifiable sustainability metrics that are aligned with their environmental objectives.
Legislation in the US is also expediting sustainability efforts.
Multi-cloud strategies, which involve using multiple cloud service providers, offer several ways to leverage the varied sustainability benefits associated with specific cloud providers. A few of the key benefits include:
- Optimizing Water and Energy Use for Maximized Efficiency: Multi-cloud environments that use water cooling can offer a more sustainable alternative for companies looking to enhance a positive environmental impact. Closed-loop water cooling methods absorb heat more easily than air and are a significant differentiator – drastically reducing both the amount of water needed compared to traditional, power and resource intensive, air-cooling methods. By reducing both net energy and water usage, water cooling systems lower the environmental impact of data centers, which is essential to meeting sustainability goals and contributing to global environmental efforts that companies have a level of responsibility in meeting.
- Enhancing Cloud Component Lifespan and Eliminating e-Waste: Customers and partners alike are driving increased scrutiny on how cloud providers manage the footprint of their entire operation, from the lifecycle of hardware and other components to the design, layout and resource consumption of their data centers. The rise of multi-cloud strategies enables companies to identify and leverage cloud providers that prioritize best practice regarding environmental responsibility and sustainability outcomes. Cloud providers that focus on recycling and reusing their server components can be crucial in cutting or even eliminating, e-waste entirely. By adopting a wholistic lifecycle approach, these cloud providers can extend the use of specific components that have a typical lifecycle of 24-36 months to 7-9 years.
- Reducing the Impact of Data Center Facilities: When it comes to standing up a new facility, managing environmental impacts starts well before the data center is operational. Due to the extreme environmental impact of the base materials required for new construction like concrete and lumber (accounting for as much as 37% of global emissions), utilizing existing industrial sites provides several incentives. In addition to allowing cloud providers to significantly reduce their carbon footprint, leveraging existing structures also enables them to move much faster to stand up new facilities. Prioritizing cloud providers who use a ‘brownfield’ approach is quickly becoming an easy part of the selection process when evaluating a partner as part of a multi-cloud strategy.
- Enhanced Efficiency with Resource Optimization: By leveraging a multi-cloud strategy, companies can allocate workloads to the infrastructures that best align with both their organizations cost optimization and sustainability goals. Shifting workloads to data centers and cloud providers that are powered by reduced energy sources and maintain lower carbon footprints, ensuring that technology operations are both cost-effective and environmentally conscious.
When properly deployed, a multi-cloud strategy allows companies to leverage any number of services and prioritize the best cloud provider ecosystem for the job, whether it be best for cost, functionality, performance or environmental impact.
As we look to the future, our collective commitment to sustainability will continue to shape our technological advancements and operational strategies in modern data centers.
By embracing multi-cloud environments and pioneering water-cooling innovations and component lifecycles, organizations can simultaneously make significant progress toward reducing their carbon footprint while also setting new standards for sustainability in tech and IT.
