Cloud computing has a big role to play in greening data centers. Recent study conducted by WSP Environment & Energy and Accenture revealed that businesses can reduce energy consumption by more than 30%, when compared against traditional on-site server rooms. Study, sponsored by Microsoft, covered key Microsoft software packages and not surprisingly made a case for small business owners to move to cloud computing.

It’s not a secret that small business owners are part of key community targeted by Microsoft. Study found that cloud computing has biggest impact on small businesses which rely mostly on email, content sharing and CRM. Small business owners achieved far more energy efficiency ( nearly 90%) compared to large organizations (~30%).

You can read this study in this PDF file. It definitely shows how Microsoft intends to use green computing in selling cloud computing solutions.

WSP developed a framework methodology aligned to the Global eSustainability Initiative (GeSI) and carried out modeling to compare the energy use and carbon emissions per user for Exchange Server 2007, SharePoint server 2007 and Dynamics CRM with their cloud-based equivalents: Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Dynamics CRM Online. The results suggest that for widely deployed and commonly used applications such as email, content sharing and customer relationship management, the cloud can enable significant reduction in carbon emissions.

Rob Bernard, Chief Environmental Strategist with Microsoft said: “The benefits of cloud computing are clear: increased productivity, reduced costs, and lower management overhead of products. Now add environmental benefits as Microsoft’s cloud can help reduce energy use and carbon emissions by at least 30% per user. The cloud has the ability to deliver business value for customers in an age where corporate responsibility is critical to business success.”

“This study provides a hard hitting, quantitative and measurable analysis of the impact that cloud computing can have directly compared to traditional deployment of IT within a company” said Josh Whitney, Corporate Sustainability Lead with WSP Environment & Energy.

“Essentially what you have happening is similar to driving private automobiles versus riding on public transportation,” said Josh Whitney. “Everyone driving cars on the highway is similar to the inefficiency of an on-premise environment as opposed to taking mass transit, which is effectively the public cloud. However, unlike mass transit, there aren’t any tradeoffs for using the cloud.”

This strategy will work very well in European markets which are sensitive to sustainable computing practices.

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