By migrating to the cloud, you protect the environment!

Much has already been written about the advantages of migrating local databases to the cloud. We all know very well that the cloud optimizes costs, increases productivity, and accelerates the technological development of companies. However, relatively little is said about one very important aspect related to migration - ecology. It turns out that moving resources to the cloud can reduce a company's carbon footprint by up to 93%!

A bit of theory

The carbon footprint is the sum of greenhouse gas emissions related directly or indirectly to a Company's activities. Sources of these emissions include but are not limited to, the production and consumption of electricity from fossil fuels, heating, cooling, transport activities, or waste management. The consumption of all greenhouse gases is standardized and converted into tonnes of environmentally harmful carbon dioxide (CO2). Sounds threatening; fortunately, for several years, a growing awareness of the use of resources and a move towards sustainability has been evident among businesses.

The cloud is green

According to a study by 451 Research, migrating resources to the AWS cloud can reduce a company's carbon footprint by as much as 88%. In a similar study, Microsoft Azure shows that the decarbonization of migrating enterprises can be as high as 93%. Such spectacular results are primarily driven by the efficiency of the cloud, which, according to available research, is 3.6 times higher than local server solutions. This is due to the low efficiency of local solutions. It is estimated that the capacity of an average local server is used at an average of...18%.

For years, the designers of the world's largest data centers of cloud solutions providers have focused strongly on optimizing them in terms of efficiency and energy efficiency. By taking advantage of economies of scale and applying the best solutions developed worldwide, they make a real difference to the environment. An important factor supporting the reduction of the carbon footprint by cloud vendors is the dedicated parts and components used in the computing centers. For example - processors. Custom-designed and manufactured to exact specifications, they work faster and more efficiently and consume less electricity than those generally available. Multiplying the unit value of the energy saved by the millions of processors used for the cloud, we achieve a massive, real-world reduction in pollution worldwide. Such examples can be multiplied. They are concerned with reducing energy consumption and the sustainable management of waste, water, and transport, on which the world's cloud giants place great emphasis.

Choose eco-locations

However, the cloud industry's biggest players have gone two steps further. The Google Cloud Platform declared its carbon neutrality as early as 2007 and committed, by 2030, to using only CO2-free energy in its data centers worldwide. Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services Clouds have made similar commitments. Microsoft Azure data centers are to be powered by 100% renewable energy by 2025. The platform has also pledged that five years later, it will return more water to the environment than it uses for its consumption, and in expanding its infrastructure, it will not cut down a single tree.

AWS, in turn, has pledged to be fully carbon neutral by 2030 while increasing the efficiency of its infrastructure to a level that will allow corporate and local data centers to migrate to the cloud to reduce their CO2 emissions by 400-1000 tonnes.

When users choose to store their data in a specific location, they are given a range of information about the level of carbon footprint reduction the center is at. They can also see which center, and to what extent, uses clean, renewable wind or solar energy.* In this way, the location of our data not only influences the optimization of its use but also supports the environment.

Sustainability included

Users' motivations for migrating to the cloud are varied. These range from the desire to increase security to greater flexibility of the solutions used for cost optimization. In practice, migration to the cloud is also an excellent way to build the image of a socially responsible, committed, and environmentally conscious company. If the image is managed wisely, we receive the status of an "eco-friendly" company in the migration package, the skillful communication of which can bring invaluable benefits.

*data available depends on Vendor (AWS, GCP, Azure)