A study on Cloud Computing Energy Efficiency

There has been a much discussion about cloud computing technology that is a green technology solution to run large data centers. Recent surveys conducted by Pike Research have shown that energy saving through cloud computing is deliberately "substantial."

Taken as a part of the cloud computing scenarios, Pike Research estimates that data centers will consume as much as 139.8 terawatt / hours (TWh) of electricity in 2020 and that will be a great reduction of 31 percent from 201.8 TWh in 2010.

This much reduction would drive a total spending on data center energy down from USD23.3 billion in 2010 to USD16.0 billion in 2020, and would caused a decrease of 28% of greenhouse gas emissions during 2010.

Cloud computing are able to achieve industry-leading levels of energy efficiency. The study highlights the fact that some big companies will have the financial resources to offer the same level of energy efficiency in their own data centers. Pike estimated that much of the processes that are being handled by the data center today will be transferred to the cloud by 2020. Some of this data centers could have been running google apps for business.