5 “Must-Haves” for Sustainable Cloud Provision with GleSYS’s Claes Hohner
The consideration of sustainability and environmental impact has become a non-negotiable for today’s future-ready firms.
When asked to rank issues most pressing to their organizations, many C-level executives rated climate change as a “top three issue” in Deloitte’s 2023 CxO Sustainability Report. 61% also said climate change will have a high or very high impact on their organization’s strategy and operations over the next three years.
By leveraging sustainable cloud services, businesses can reduce their carbon footprint and contribute to positive climate action, all while enjoying cost savings through improved energy efficiency and revenue.
So, how do service providers minimize their contribution to global electricity usage and ensure they are meeting the demands of today’s business customers?
We sat down with Claes Hohner, Head of Sales at GleSYS, who shared five must-haves for providers wanting to offer sustainable cloud services.
A checklist for service providers: The five “must-haves”
1. A renewable electricity source
It’s recommended that all services are provided by data centers that use renewable or non-fossil sources of electricity. According to Hohner, the carbon footprint of the incoming electricity is typically the most significant contributor to the total carbon footprint of the services. The average CO2 footprint per kWh can vary by 10x between countries that are just a few milliseconds away from each other on the internet. Therefore, it is important to carefully consider what and where the electricity source is.
2. Heat recovery
Hohner believes that providers should have a system in place to recover and reuse the server-generated heat. Generally, sending it to a district heating grid is the most efficient system in terms of power usage effectiveness (PUE) and carbon emissions. However, district heating grids are not available everywhere, and if a provider needs to have their workload in a location that does not have these grids, “doing something with the excess heat is still much better than nothing,” Hohner says.
3. Efficient hardware
Eco-conscious providers should also strive to use energy-efficient hardware. ARM-based CPUs, for example, operate using a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture, which delivers notably high performance per watt and therefore consumes less power than x86 CPUs for the same workload. Ultimately, the use of efficient hardware helps providers to reduce the energy consumption and emissions of their services.
4. Reuse of hardware
Hohner also recommends that providers have a system in place to extend the useful life of the hardware, such as refurbishing or repurposing components. This helps to reduce e-waste and the need for new hardware, which requires significant resources and energy.
5. Hybrid enabling
In order for customers to be able to choose the most efficient and sustainable option for their workload, providers should also offer both cloud and dedicated hardware options. This helps to optimize energy consumption and reduce the overall carbon footprint of the service.
How many boxes do you tick?
Hohner anticipates that the service providers adopting these practices will be in the highest demand in the next 12 months as more customers look to reduce their environmental impact.
“Customers are increasingly concerned about sustainability and the environmental impact of the services they consume, regardless of whether it is colocation, public cloud or a hybrid solution,” Hohner says.
“We are already seeing larger consumer-oriented e-commerce companies and public sector bids that are requesting heat recovery or, at the very least, requiring their prospective service providers to state their carbon footprint so that they can use it as a selection criterion.
“As a result, the early adopters of sustainable cloud services will be better positioned for growth in the coming years.”
As a pioneer in data center heat recovery, GleSYS is well-positioned to meet the growing demand for sustainable cloud services, which is also enabling them to provide essential heating services to residents.
Hohner tells us that the excess heat from GleSYS’s data centers located in Falkenberg and Stockholm is sent to the municipal heating grids, which allows the Swedish service provider to help heat 1,000 apartments in Stockholm and potentially supply 35% of the heating needs of Falkenberg once its west-coast data center is fully populated.
“When the effect of the heat recovery is considered, the net carbon footprint of cloud services from our data centers is the lowest possible for a given workload, anywhere.”
As customer demand for going green only continues on its upwards trajectory, leading service providers like GleSYS will continue to hone their sustainable solutions and find new avenues to reduce their impact.
To learn more about GleSYS’s offerings, visit their page on Cloudscene.
Contributor: Claes Hohner, Head of Sales, GleSYS
