Cloud Computing and Sustainability, Essay Example

Executive summary

Sustainability and cloud computing are both the leading transformative trends in the society as well as in businesses. Majority of the consumers are using the cloud computing services extensively like mobile applications, online gaming, social media and email. Cloud computing services are also being adopted by business communities for minimizing costs and improving the business and IT agility.  Similarly, sustainability is gaining continuous importance for being a performance indicator of IT departments and organizations.

This report represents a detail design document of Olympic ICT EXPO on cloud computing and sustainability which is all set to launch from 1^st January 2013 to 31^st December 2013. The report highlights the expo themes and discusses reasons for choosing the themes and the benefits that it likely to bring on business operations of an organization.

Introduction

The main objective of this report is to propose a detail design plan of an Olympic ICT Expo. The proposed Olympic ICT expo will be designed on two main themes namely cloud computing and sustainability. This Expo will take place from 1^st January 2013 to 31^st December 2013 in three room exhibition space showcasing the sustainability and innovative cloud computing concepts and applications.

The proposed Olympic IT Expo aims at sustainability and concept of cloud computing technologies for accelerating the liable business agenda.  It is a celebrated educational event that focuses on helping the senior executives to comprehend, evaluate and apply the most recent computing solutions for supporting the objectives of strategic sustainability with the help of different ways mentioned here. Firstly, minimizing the carbon footprint significantly for the computing infrastructure and devices is the nest option. Secondly, using the cloud computing for facilitating sustainable business processes within the organization is another option. Thirdly, development of reporting systems so as to analyses, monitors and regulates the social and environmental impacts.

Analysis of Expo Themes

Cloud Computing and Sustainability

Today the technological world is fast evolving and new ideas surface the world every day. In such a scenario, cloud computing serves to be of great use. According to Armbust (2010) one of the leading technology which appeals to the IT professionals is Cloud Computing which is 11% more interesting than the competitors (ARMBRUST & FOX, 2010). Cloud Computing helps third parties to offer advanced and basic services via the Internet against a small fee. This reprieves the consumer from the effort to install and save the applications on one’s laptop, desktop and other physical devices. This reflects that the resources and space used by an organization are minimized which ultimately minimizes the carbon footprint of that organization. This finally reduces the total cost effectively. An added advantage of Cloud Computing is that there are three important components to it like Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) (Beard, 2008).

Cloud Computing, Efficiency and Sustainability

There has been rapid growth in the number of high-speed networks around the globe. Networks like Yahoo, eBay, Amazon and Google with their big operating data centers all over the world are releasing unwanted amount of carbon into the atmosphere. Nevertheless, Cloud Computing is not being adopted only for some economic reasons. It is a major segment of the various innovations that are implemented to minimize the carbon footprints released into the environment. Majority of the data centers operated by internal companies are having their servers run at about 30% capacity. Whereas the bigger cloud data centers are having their servers running at 80% capacity. This is how depletion of energy resources is minimized along with a decline in the volume of carbon released against every unit of the computing power.

Cloud Computing serves to be beneficial in this sense and is aiding in achievement of environmental benefits associated with virtualization. This results in promoting sustainability fostering efficiency and being environment friendly. Today, sustainability and Cloud Computing are the leading transformative propensity in societies and businesses. Cloud computing services like online mobile and gaming applications, social media and emails are being largely used by organizations and individuals. It is finding increased applications in businesses for reducing the costs and enhancing business and IT efficiency. Today’s organizations aim at focusing on the development of long-tern policies for reducing the damage that is caused to our environment via more sustainable products and operations (DURKEE, 2010).

Business Benefits from Attending the Expo

There are various benefits of attending this expo. It will help in learning the relevance of cloud computing from a technological, business and economic viewpoint. It will also help in gaining knowledge from the industry experts regarding the questions and issues one has to consider while measuring the systems based on cloud computing. One can also see clearly the potential pitfalls and benefits of shifting to a cloud system. One can also realize the requirements that a provider of cloud computing must have so as to ensure the security of the applications and data. It becomes easier to discover ways in which traditional data centers that are costly and inflexible can be transformed to a cloud computing system which is automated, virtualized and secure. One can also attend the Cloud Computing Boot camp freely with the help of the Golden Pass registration for the delegates. The best advantage is that one can master the ways of improving the business agility and lower the capital and operating costs at the same time in the enterprise. One also realizes what works, what’s coming up and what does not work (Buyya & James Broberg, 2001).

Visiting the exhibits, demo theatres and 100+ booths can give one the opportunity of asking face to face questions to the vendors which can save millions of dollars for the company. One gets the opportunity to enjoy the special giveaways and events that take place via the biggest Cloud conference globally. There are chances of winning services and software that are offered by exhibitors and sponsors in different drawings. Interviews of Industry shakers and movers can be viewed live at the on-site studio. One can also relax in the Bean bag Lounge and get the most of the free wireless broadband (Isaca, 2011).

Participant Registration Method

A user friendly website will be setup to promote the Olympic ICT Expo on cloud computing and sustainability. The website will be featuring all the information regarding the EXPO and the benefits that business executives and all other participants can gain from the expo. A registration portal will be integrated in this website for pre-registration of participants. There will be no entry or registration fee and this website will be promoted thoroughly to spread the awareness on this event among various business group and industry personnel. The website will be the main source of promotion of this expo which will be even publicized in various newspapers and social networks.

The Olympic ICT Exhibition Space

Visitors Experience on attending Expo

The proposed expo will have following events as the main agenda of the entire 12 months expo programmer

Eco Motor Show: This is an Eco Motor show in which the leading manufacturers of motors in the country showcase their environment friendly goods and the service and product providers display the ways in which they can minimize petrol consumption.

Public Lectures: These lectures are all about learning ways in which one can make their homes greener with the help of such free of cost workshops based on sectors like water efficiency, energy efficiency, green décor and building, waste recycling, gardening and organics and eco and shopping labels.

Youth and the Green Economy: Green Economy and its networks offer career opportunities and in this context the Youth Focus in this year was a big success.

Vision Zero Waste, Organic Market: It has been decided that the primary organic market of Gauteng on 28^th of July 2013 as on a Sunday will be organizing a unique market at the

Sustainability week:  It will be displaying all its best organic wares and food. If one desires to have a look at them then the Sustainability Week is the best option.

Save the Rhino: The attendees have been requested to make a donation for charity as they desire. The charity groups for the 2013 event will be announced in the time to come.

ICT and Sustainability Workshop: An effective workshop on implementing concept of ICT in an organization having the sustainability platform. This workshop will enlighten the participants on the usage of cloud computing and its implementation in a sustainable manner within the organizations.

Data Center Efficiency: A useful session on data center efficiency linking the concept of cloud computing and sustainability.

Cloud Expo’s Cloud Fact and Business Benefits

The usage of cloud computing has taken speed since 2008, for instance, Animoto had its user base increased from around 5000 to about 750,000 within three day time span with the help of the cloud services of Amazon.  Today cloud services are used by national governments, organizations and mainstream companies for leveraging the data power on demand at a pace and scale which has never been recorded in history of the Internet. (Isaca, 2011)

As per the 2011 report of IBMs Tech Trends, 755 of the respondents stated that the organization will start establishing their cloud infrastructure in the coming two years and develop new applications in the next two years. This will be the primary task for adopting cloud activities which will overtake the present top investment fields of storage and virtualization.  Today there are numerous opportunities triggered by the cloud services which help in creation of wealth but the competition is too much. This industry is such that few months are enough to make the difference (Gillam, 2010). Recent researches by IDC reveal that the global spending on the cloud services will boost threefold touching around $44.2 billion by the year 2013. Another report by Gartner predicted that the overall volume of data of the enterprises will rise by 65% in the coming years (Baun & Kunze, 2011).

Cloud Computing are the major unstoppable IT trends for the enterprises that will be converging at the Cloud Expo in north west corner of the Olympic park which will be conducted on 1^st January, 2013.

Figure 1: Cloud computing in organizations

Olympic Park like any other Cloud Expo will be offering various strategic and technical breakout sessions, industry keynotes, general sessions, power panels for discussions and a lively Expo floor having two demo theatres. This will help the delegates to view the offerings and solutions as well as discuss with the leading Cloud players one by one regarding their offerings and their applications in specific situations.

The Cloud solutions will appear side by side both in conference program and on Expo floor. One can attend the Cloud Expo in Olympic Park for the year 2013 if the organization has to be sure for getting one complete ready for adopting the cloud computing system.

Today the Internet and personal computer industry is experiencing the most dynamic technological shifts and has reached its peak by the year 2012 where it is not a trend but an absolute necessity for any business.

The Cloud Expo will have more than 175 sessions conducted by its rock star faculty at the conference selected from the main industry players of the Cloud Computing era.  All the key aspects of a Cloud system will be showcased like the platform providers, infrastructure players and the ones providing the applications. Senior technologists must attend this event along with CEOs, CTOs, CIOs, technology VPs, infrastructure directors, IT managers and directors, store and network managers, enterprise architects, network engineers and the networking and communications specialists (Jaatun, 2010).

Figure 2: Sustainability and Cloud Computing

Sustainability and cloud computing are both the leading transformative trends in the society as well as in businesses. Majority of the consumers are using the cloud computing services extensively like mobile applications, online gaming, social media and email. Cloud computing services are also being adopted by business communities for minimizing costs and improving the business and IT agility (Velte & Velte, 2009).  Similarly, sustainability is gaining continuous importance for being a performance indicator of IT departments and organizations. The corporate sustainability stakeholders, regulators and officers are becoming largely focused on the carbon footprint of IT and the organizations are laying emphasis on the development of long-tern policies for minimizing the carbon footprint emitted by them via sustainable products and operations (Sosinsky, 2011).

The providers of cloud services are into huge investments for the infrastructure of the data centers not only to offer computing power but also to provide SaaS business applications to their customers. Newer data centers are under construction on large scales having greater server density offering higher energy consumption. It has been estimated that between years 2002 to year 2020 the environmental footprint of the data centers will be tripled. The reason behind this is that merging IT corporate environments that share large-scale infrastructures that were operated by the skilled cloud providers will minimize the environment impact on the whole and reveal new efficiencies (Smoot & Tan, 2011).

There have been various research studies which help in comprehending the environmental impact created by the data centers along with enhancing their efficiency. The overall impact of sustainability of selecting an application based on cloud computing and its application has not yet been studied. Many virtual machines are capable of sharing the physical server which has high utility and minimizes the amount of physical servers needed to satisfy the demand. Virtual individual resources can be scaled by organizations to satisfy the needs of the applications rather than allocating the complete physical system that has under-utilized capability. Virtualization is capable of providing a tool for the IT departments for narrowing down the lack of efficiency between the multi- renters cloud service and on-premise disposition.

The design of the data center tells all about the physical construction of the facilitates, their association with IT and its supporting infrastructure largely affects the use of energy from the given computing power. Power Usage Effectiveness Ration (PUE) is the measure of the efficient use of power by the data centers. PUE is referred to as the overall ratio of the power drawn by any data center to the delivered power to any IT hardware. Measuring and standardizing the average use of power and its effectiveness in different companies is difficult. Nevertheless, as per the US Environmental Protection Agency had revealed an update of the 2007 Congress Report which showed an effective power use on an average as 1.91 for the data centers located in the US and majority of the businesses showed an average of 1.97 (Rittinghouse & Ransome, 2009).

With the help of economies of scale and innovation, the cloud providers have improved their use of power significantly. Today most of the designs of the data centers for the providers of cloud services have achieved effective power use which is low at 1.1 to around 1.2. This can minimize the consumption of power for the traditional data centers by 40%. Innovations like modular design for the containers, cooling which relies on the external water or air evaporation and modern power management via optimization of power supply are the ways in which data centers have improved on the effectiveness of power usage (Molen, Get Ready for Cloud Computing, 2010).

Cloud computing is acquiring wider adoption as well as sharing of the data processed by the modern facilities of the data centers enhances and states that the PUE average for the industry must improve. Along with this, newer data centers are constantly trying to attain greater efficiency.

Back Office IT

There will be a group of two IT professional appointed for the back office IT support of this expo. All the required IT supplies and devices will be arranged by these professionals. In case of any IT emergency or requirement these professionals will always be available during the expo. The arrangement of various computers and projectors will be done prior to the expo start date in order to execute uninterrupted expo programme. It will be ensured that all the expo staff members are in constant touch with back office IT support team to report any emergency.

References 

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Baun, C., & Kunze, M. (2011). Cloud Computing: Web-Based Dynamic IT Services. London: Springer.

Beard, H. (2008). Cloud Computing Best Practices for Managing and Measuring Processes for On-demand Computing, Applications and Data Centers in the Cloud With Slas. London: Lulu.com.

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Buyya, R., & James Broberg. (2001). Cloud Computing: Principles and Paradigms. London: John Wiley & Sons.

Durkee, D. (2010). Why Cloud Computing Will Never Be Free. Communications of the ACM , 14 (2), 23-69.

Gillam, L. (2010). Cloud Computing: Principles, Systems and Applications. Computer Communications and Networks , 15 (4).

Isaca. (2011). IT Control Objectives for Cloud Computing: Controls and Assurance in the Cloud. London: ISACA.

Jaatun, M. G. (2010). Cloud Computing: First International Conference, CloudCom 2009, Beijing, China, December 1-4, 2009, Proceedings. Volume 5931 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science (6), 99-145.

Molen, F. V. (2010). Get Ready for Cloud Computing. London: Van Haren Publishing.

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Rittinghouse, J. W., & Ransome, J. F. (2009). Cloud Computing: Implementation, Management, and Security. New York: CRC Press.

Smoot, S. R., & Tan, N. K. (2011). Private Cloud Computing: Consolidation, Virtualization, and Service-Oriented Infrastructure. London: 34-90.

Sosinsky, B. (2011). Cloud Computing Bible. Volume 757 of Bible Series , 90-199.

Srivastava, K. (2011). A New Approach of CLOUD: Computing Infrastructure on Demand. Trends in Information Management; , 14, 23-96.

Velte, T., & Velte, A. T. (2009). Cloud Computing, A Practical Approach (2nd ed.). London: McGraw-Hill Prof Med/Tech,.

Xu, X. (2012). From cloud computing to cloud manufacturing. Robotics & Computer-Integrated Manufacturing , 11, 20-69.