About 1 percent of all electricity generated goes to cloud computing. By the end of this decade, we could be devoting 8 percent or more. How much energy can we dedicate to all this computing?
Software and hardware engineering will no doubt need to reorient their design practices more around power efficiency.
Read more:
Cloud Computing’s Coming Energy Crisis
https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/cloud-computings-coming-energy-crisis
7 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
For comparison:
On the face of it, the question about energy use is a fair one. According to the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance (CCAF), Bitcoin currently consumes around 110 Terawatt Hours per year — 0.55% of global electricity production,
https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actually-consume
The most reputable such estimate comes from the University of Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, according to which the global bitcoin network currently consumes about 80 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, roughly equal to the annual output of 23 coal-fired power plants, or close to what is consumed by the nation of Finland.
https://qz.com/2023032/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-use/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Computers, data centers and networks consume 10% of the world’s electricity. 30% of this electricity goes to power terminal equipment (computers, mobiles and other devices), 30% goes to data centers and 40% goes to the network.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IT_energy_management
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.knoa.com/four-critical-cloud-migration-failures-even-the-top-pros-still-make/
Mike Johnson says:
One of the most important challenge faced in cloud computing is the optimization of Energy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/technology/cloud-computing-energy-usage.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Deep dive on AWS, with margin estimates for specific services including S3, EC2, and EBS, as AWS has made up over half of Amazon’s operating profit since 2014
How Amazon’s cloud business generates billions in profit
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/05/how-amazon-web-services-makes-money-estimated-margins-by-service.html
Amazon’s cloud division doesn’t break out gross margins by services, but some outsiders estimate that storage and network offerings could be highly lucrative.
Customers can lower their Amazon cloud costs in a variety of ways, including adjusting which computing resources they use.
Every year since at least 2014, more than half of Amazon’s operating profit has come from the online retailer’s cloud division, Amazon Web Services, which provides online services and tools that software developers can stitch together to run websites and applications.
It’s an impressive business in absolute dollar terms, not just percentages: AWS ended 2020 with $13 billion in operating income, which helped Amazon report total net income of $21 billion for the year. No wonder Amazon chose the head of AWS for 15 years, Andy Jassy, as its CEO when Jeff Bezos stepped down earler this year.
Alibaba, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle are all looking to challenge AWS. And unlike the Alibaba and Google clouds, AWS is profitable.
In the second quarter, Jassy’s final quarter as cloud chief, AWS had $4 billion in operating income, up about 25% year over year and ahead of analysts’ estimates. Revenue grew 37%. Adam Selipsky, who sold data analytics software company Tableau to Salesforce after 11 years at AWS, took Jassy’s spot in July.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yritysten sadat sovellukset useissa pilvissä
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/12669-yritysten-sadat-sovellukset-useissa-pilvissae
Monipilvimallista on tullut yritysten yleinen tapa järjestää sovelluksensa. – Monipilvi tulee olemaan seuraavien 20 vuoden digitaalinen liiketoimintamalli, korosti VMwaren toimitusjohtaja Raghu Raghuram VMworld-tapahtuman keynote-puheessaan. Palveluntarjoajan tehtävä on tarjota yrityksille vapaus valita juuri heille sopiva pilvi, heidän liiketoimintansa perusteella, Raghuram täydensi.
Tilastot tukevat monipilvitrendiä. Keskimäärin yritykset hyödyntävät liiketoiminnassaan noin 500 sovellusta, ja usein näitä sovelluksia käytetään erilaisissa pilviympäristöissä. 75 prosenttia VMwaren asiakkaista käyttää kahta tai useampaa pilviympäristöä, ja 40 prosentilla näitä ympäristöjä on kolme – tai enemmän.
Erilaisten pilviympäristöjen käyttö lisää mahdollisuuksia innovointiin ja nopeuttaa uusien sovelluksien kehittämistä ja lanseeraamista.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is there really a march from the public cloud back on-prem?
Not exactly, but the public cloud isn’t right for every workload
https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/16/public-cloud-back-on-prem/
It turns out that the cloud is expensive, and the more workloads you move to the cloud, the more it costs. Go figure.
When we were in the “growth at all costs” phase between 2021 and 2022, it was easy to ignore or minimize the costs associated with operating in the cloud. But when companies started scrutinizing every entry in the technology budget, it became pretty clear that the cloud bills were big and only getting bigger, and maybe we should look for ways to lessen that budgetary impact.