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Geo-location key to sustainable outsourced data storage and cloud services – Gartner |
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Though cloud computing services are widely seen as 'greener' than owning and running in-house technology infrastructure, Gartner says geographic location is the real key to more sustainable outsourced data storage and services. Gartner's estimates almost 50 percent of operating costs being associated with heating and cooling,  which makes energy consumption, efficiency, monitoring and management a dominant trend in data center operations over the coming five years. The firm says its own research conducted recently showed that more than there are 30% potential savings in operating costs in terms of electricity when efficiency design principles are incorporated, as well as lower upfront capital costs. As an example, the firm points to the case of Australia, which generates around 92% of its energy from fossil fuels, while neighbor New Zealand is regarded as relatively green and classed as a low-emission intensity country. Gartner says the development of IT storage and services in New Zealand, leveraging the vast and established renewable energy sources such as geothermal, wind, tidal and hydro power, could provide the basis for a substantial content-based economic model.Factors influencing geographic location, according to Gartner, include the longer-term availability and cost of electricity, communications infrastructure and data latency issues, data privacy, the need to ensure that latency-sensitive services (such as stock market transactions, issues of national security) are securely and proximally located, the presence of a local skilled IT services workforce, and an advantageous local taxation regime that encourages long-term public/private procurement strategies for electricity and other key resources. “Truly sustainable computing needs to combine energy-efficient technologies and the use of reliably available low-emission electricity, which may prompt significant changes to the geolocation of data storage and other services in the long term,” said Marcus Blosch, research vice president at Gartner. “Just as labor arbitrage has driven some aspects of business process outsourcing activities, emissions arbitrage will play an increasingly significant role for outsourced IT storage and services.” |
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