Case Study on Environmental Impact of Cloud Computing

Abstract

With ever increasing usage of IT infrastructure around the globe, the increase in energy consumption and carbon emission is a worrisome situation for everyone because of its direct effect on environment. The environment is being dangerously impacted by Information Technology infrastructure extensive use and its waste. Cloud computing has emerged as one step further solution to deploy all virtualized IT resources as per need on self-service basis as a rental method for the users. Different cloud deployment methods have emerged according to the need of users, institutions and communities. In last decade virtualization has been a milestone in enabling optimal usage of information technology resources. Cloud computing has provided a platform for deploying everything as a Service in IT, which has changed the economics of IT based business and organizations from Capital Expenditure to Operational Expenditure. For enabling Cloud services we first need to understand our existing infrastructure. In second step we should be able to virtualize it for optimal usage. Then with the help of existing cloud applications we can deliver and deploy information technology as a resource at various levels such as infrastructure, platform, and software.