We all know that times are tough at the moment – very tough economically, as well as politically in other countries. Well, companies will also need to figure out creative methods of saving money to make the bottomline look better in their annual reports, but apart from the old standby of firing your workers, what other ways are there of increasing efficiency levels at the organization? Enter cloud computing – Google did some study on their cloud-based services such as Google Apps, and realized that using cloud-based services is able to help reduce energy use, lower carbon emissions and save one money – simultaneously. Sounds as though you were dating a pair of hot looking twins and they both want to marry you, no? Those who feel that polygamy brings far more headache than potential joy might want to share a different analogy.
Google realized that Gmail is up to 80 times more energy efficient compared to running traditional in-house email. With lower energy usage, this ends up with less carbon pollution, translated to more energy saved for organizations. It is said that at the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), they switched all of their 17,000 users to Google Apps for Government, resulting in a reduction of server energy consumption by nearly 90% as well as carbon emissions by 85%, now how about that? In monetary terms, we are looking at $285,000 annually on energy costs alone!