A couple of weeks back, Federal CIO Vivek Kundra announced the White House Cloud Computing initiative. Cloud computing, he said, was the "green computing option". The presentation video concluded with the phrase "lower cost, faster, greener."
Twice in the past few weeks I have been asked, "What is Cloud Computing and why is it green?". I expect - hope - to get this question more often. So let me practice an answer here - and I'd appreciate any suggestions you have to offer.
Basically, Cloud Computing is a model in which IT infrastructure and software are offered as services to users over the Internet.
Simple enough, right? At first glance, it doesn't sound particularly new. Applications such as Salesforce.com and EMC's own Mozy On-Line Backup have been served up over the Internet for a while now. And indeed, those applications are part of the gathering cloud. But cloud computing implies much more.
The difference
The cloud itself comprises many services running on a set of pooled, highly configurable hardware and software resources. In fact, those resources are so dynamically configurable that services can easily get more resources, give some up, or even move to a different set of hardware while still running.
Clouds are be self-provisioning, or "on demand". Like the similarly named cable service, there's no human intervention necessary to order and start receiving your service.
What makes cloud really transformative in the data center is these services can actually be "IT infrastructure". The image of classic IT infrastructure is a set of very carefully selected, deployed and interconnected hardware (i.e., storage systems, and network devices) and enabling software (e.g., directories, security, system management) designed to support a specific set of applications for a particular group of users. You have a new application to deliver? Today, it's buy a new server or go find a server with enough capacity remaining. Tomorrow, it's bring up your browser and ask for more compute capacity. You need not know where in the world it lives or whose hardware it's running on as long as it meets your performance needs. Yet the security of the information and computing assets remain firmly in your control.
The Greener Computing Option
Information technology is estimated to account for 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions. And the hardware industry is still a far cry from the "cradle-to-cradle" model that avoids the creation of industrial waste and the depletion of non-renewable resources. On the other hand, IT is absolutely fundamental to mitigating "the other 98%", optimizing the use of natural resources, and shifting to a low-carbon economy.
Cloud computing holds great promise in both fronts. Granted, it's not all proven out yet, but here's where some of the potential lies:
- Shared resources can eliminate redundancies. It's simple economy of scale.
- Dynamically-assigned resource pools means that spare capacity isn't sitting around drawing power in as many places or as many configurations.
- Clouds can provide what you might call "overdraft protection"; that is, data centers can run at higher utilization if they know they can draw on "the cloud" in the event of an unexpected peak in demand.
- Location independence could mean the ability to move services to physical facilities where power is cleaner or used more efficiently. The tyranny of the speed of light will certainly limit "follow the moon" - changing longitudes daily to take advantage of evening cooling . But it could work for some applications; more will be able to "follow the seasons"; shifting biannually by latitude to take advantage of winter cooling.
- Properly instrumented, clouds will be able to inform consumers of their environmental (energy, carbon, etc.) impact , to enable them to be accountable for their choices.
- Clouds can provide an elastic infrastructure to enable "retro-commissioning" of more traditional infrastructure. I heard a CIO in NYC the other day say that one of the biggest challenges to keeping up with best practices is that any changes to his data center were like "changing the engine in a car while it's speeding at 70 MPH down the road". What if that infrastructure could be temporarily extended into the cloud, the applications shifted, the infrastructure upgrade, and the applications shifted "home" again?
- For C2C (Cradle-to-Cradle) devotees, note that Cloud Computing is a product service model, in which the provider's financial results are tied to getting more out of the hardware, rather than getting more hardware out of the factory.
- Clouds hold the potential for rapid connection between disparate sources of people and data to accelerate innovation to address all sorts of environmental challenges. See The Sustainability Potential of Cloud Computing.
No doubt there's more. And no doubt some will be harder to achieve than others. There are challenges: security, operating at scale, dynamic resource management. As it happens, though, these are all in EMC's "sweet spot". And solving them will make a difference in the world.
And that's why I'm writing about clouds.
Some useful resources:
Cloud Computing described in On Magazine
NIST definition of "Cloud Computing"
Dick Sullivan on the White House announcement
White House Cloud Computing announcement
Blog Post: The Sustainability Potential of Cloud Computing: Smarter Design
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