Cloud Computing - The IT Solution for the 21st Century Research methodology


“Once public cloud providers are more confident with the security of their offering, they will take on more liability and allow firms to move more of their IT to the public cloud.”


Boeing, Jim Rubert


“Government legislation on sustainability and data protection means cloud computing, especially offshore, has to be monitored closely and managed proactively.”


CloudApps, Peter Grant


The purpose of this study is to get first hand accounts of companies’ use of cloud computing and to quantify the potential financial and environmental benefits that can be attained from this technology. For energy and climate change policy-makers, the analysis explains how cloud computing can assist countries to reduce CO2 emissions.


This research is based on:


1. In-depth case studies with 11 multi-national corporations, across a broad spectrum of industries, who have invested in cloud computing.


2. In-depth interviews with experts from three global cloud computing service providers.


3. A financial model built to calculate the NPV of cloud computing based on a set of specified assumptions.


4. A carbon reduction model built to calculate carbon reductions from cloud computing based on a series of parameters including the size of the firm, the number of servers, server utilization rates, data center power usage effectiveness (PUE), data transmission and embedded energy.


5. An economic model, based on financial data for over 1,800 global firms operating in the US that forecasts economy-wide financial and environmental benefits from cloud computing up until 2020.


6. The methodology used in this report aligns with the assessment methodology established by the Global e-Sustainability Initiative8 (GeSI), a global not for profit association which brings together leading ICT companies and non-governmental organizations committed to achieving sustainability objectives through innovative technology.


We have shown that different deployment models exist for cloud computing (public, private and hybrid). For the purposes of this study, we analyzed cloud computing in terms of public and private cloud since that is how firms allocate spending (hybrid cloud merely describes a combination of these two approaches). We also included a ‘dedicated IT’ deployment model which can be defined as the traditional IT deployment approach. It is a non-cloud based model without virtualized servers and without any of the key characteristics associated with cloud computing.


Deployment models This report analyzes three IT deployment models which are defined as follows: Public cloud – A third party provides the cloud service on a multi-tenant basis such that different firms share the same infrastructure, platform or instance of the software application. Private cloud – The firm builds its own cloud and makes the service available exclusively within the business (often referred to as a private internal cloud). Dedicated IT – A non-cloud service without virtualized servers and without any of the key characteristics associated with cloud computing.


8


8. http://www.gesi.org/ReportsPublications/ AssessmentMethodology.aspx


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26