Abstract:

Cloud computing is a highly scalable and cost-effective infrastructure for

running
HPC, enterprise and Web applications. However, the growing demand of
Cloud infrastructure
has drastically increased the energy consumption of data centers, which has
become a critical
issue. High energy consumption not only translates to high operational cost,
which reduces the
profit margin of Cloud providers, but also leads to high carbon emissions
which is not
environmentally friendly. Hence, energy-efficient solutions are required to
minimize the impact
of Cloud computing on the environment. In order to design such solutions,
deep analysis of
Cloud is required with respect to their power efficiency. Thus, in this chapter,
we discuss various
elements of Clouds which contribute to the total energy consumption and
how it is addressed in
the literature. We also discuss the implication of these solutions for future
research directions to
enable green Cloud computing. The chapter also explains the role of Cloud
users in achieving
this goal.
Introduction
With the growth of high speed networks over the last decades, there is an
alarming rise in its
usage comprised of thousands of concurrent e-commerce transactions and
millions of Web
queries a day. This ever-increasing demand is handled through large-scale
datacenters, which
consolidate hundreds and thousands of servers with other infrastructure such
as cooling, storage
and network systems. Many internet companies such as Google, Amazon,
eBay, and Yahoo are
operating such huge datacenters around the world.

The commercialization of these developments is defined currently as Cloud

computing [2],
where computing is delivered as utility on a pay-as-you-go basis.
Traditionally, business
organizations used to invest huge amount of capital and time in acquisition
and maintenance of
computational resources. The emergence of Cloud computing is rapidly
changing this
ownership-based approach to subscription-oriented approach by providing
access to scalable
infrastructure and services on-demand. Users can store, access, and share
any amount of
information in Cloud. That is, small or medium enterprises/organizations do
not have to worry
about purchasing, configuring, administering, and maintaining their own
computing
infrastructure. They can focus on sharpening their core competencies by
exploiting a number of
Cloud computing benefits such as on-demand computing resources, faster
and cheaper software
development capabilities at low cost. Moreover, Cloud computing also offers
enormous amount
of compute power to organizations which require processing of tremendous
amount of data
generated almost every day. For instance, financial companies have to
maintain every day the dynamic information about their hundreds of clients,
and genomics research has to manage huge
volumes of gene sequencing data.
Therefore, many companies not only view Clouds as a useful on-demand
service, but also a
potential market opportunity. According to IDC (International Data
Corporation) report [1], the
global IT Cloud services spending is estimated to increase from $16 billion in
2008 to $42 billion
in 2012, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27%.
Attracted by this growth

prospects, Web-based companies (Amazon, eBay, Salesforce.com), hardware

vendors (HP, IBM,
Cisco), telecom providers (AT&T, Verizon), software firms (EMC/VMware,
Oracle/Sun,
Microsoft) and others are all investing huge amount of capital in establishing
Cloud datacenters.
According to Googles earnings reports, the company has spent $US1.9
billion on datacenters in
2006, and $US2.4 billion in 2007[3].
Figure 1. Cloud and Environmental Sustainability
Clouds are essentially virtualized datacenters and applications offered as
services on a
subscription basis as shown in Figure 1. They require high energy usage for
its operation [4].
Today, a typical datacenter with 1000 racks need 10 Megawatt of power to
operate [5], which
results in higher operational cost. Thus, for a datacenter, the energy cost is a
significant
component of its operating and up-front costs. In addition, in April 2007,
Gartner estimated that
the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) industry generates
about 2% of the total
global CO2 emissions, which is equal to the aviation industry [5]. According to
a report
published by the European Union, a decrease in emission volume of 15%
30% is required before
year 2020 to keep the global temperature increase below 2 0C. Thus, energy
consumption and
carbon emission by Cloud infrastructures has become a key environmental
concern. Some studies show that Cloud computing can actually make
traditional datacenters more energy
efficient by using technologies such as resource virtualization and workload
consolidation. The
traditional data centres running Web applications are often provisioned to
handle sporadic peak

loads, which can result in low resource utilization and wastage of energy.
Cloud datacenter, on
the other hand, can reduce the energy consumed through server
consolidation, whereby different
workloads can share the same physical host using virtualization and unused
servers can be
switched off. A recent research by Accenture [7] shows that moving business
applications to
Cloud can reduce carbon footprint of organizations. According to the report,
small businesses
saw the most dramatic reduction in emissions up to 90 percent while using
Cloud resources.
Large corporations can save at least 30-60 percent in carbon emissions using
Cloud applications,
and mid-size businesses can save 60-90 percent.
Contrary to the above opinion, some studies, for example Greenpeace [6],
observe that the Cloud
phenomenon may aggravate the problem of carbon emissions and global
warming. The reason
given is that the collective demand for computing resources is expected to
further increase
dramatically in the next few years. Even the most efficiently built datacenter
with the highest
utilization rates will only mitigate, rather than eliminate, harmful CO2
emissions. The reason
given is that Cloud providers are more interested in electricity cost reduction
rather than carbon
emission. The data collected by the study is presented in Table 1 below.
Clearly, none of the
cloud datacenter in the table can be called as green.

In summary, Cloud computing, being an emerging technology also raises

significant questions
about its environmental sustainability. While financial benefits of Cloud
computing have been

analyzed widely in the literature, the energy efficiency of Cloud computing as

a whole has not
been analyzed. Through the use of large shared virtualized datacenters Cloud
computing can
offer large energy savings. However, Cloud services can also further increase
the internet traffic
and its growing information database which could decrease such energy
savings. Thus, this
chapter explores the environmental sustainability of Cloud computing by
analyzing various
technologies and mechanism that support this goal. Our analysis is important
for users and
organization that are looking at Cloud computing as a solution for their
administrative,
infrastructural and management problems. Finally, we also propose and
recommend a Green Cloud framework for reducing its carbon
footprint in wholesome manner without sacrificing the quality of service
(performance,
responsiveness and availability) offered by the multiple Cloud providers.
Growth of cloud computing in India:

Research studies done during the last 5 years indicate that Indian businesses are willing to
spend over 36% of their IT costs on public cloud services due to its business flexibility
and low costs. The study made by Gartner explains that public cloud service sales are
worth 24.54 billion INR in 2013, which is a 36% increase compared to 2010 figures.
Gartner predicts that growth is constant at compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of
33.2%. Smaller companies are more willing and quick to adopt public clouds because it
reduces their upfront costs associated with new hardware, software implementations and
maintenance costs. The Gartner study also predicts that the business potential of cloud
computing in India will touch 89 billion INR by 2017. This statistical data is quite likely
to change soon, but first let us have a look into cloud adoption across a few sectors.
Cloud adoption in manufacturing: Indian manufacturing sector has come a long way and the use

of IT in manufacturing can be found since last over 2 decades. Since 2010, CIOs in Indian
manufacturing have started adopting cloud models and this is highlighted in many research

studies and industry circles. Some of the most notable application areas in manufacturing suited
for cloud are CRM and supply chain applications which provide better connectivity to external
stakeholders and customers. The area of business intelligence (BI) and business analytics (BA) is
highly important for manufacturing sector because of large amounts of data generated in
manufacturing which is a challenge for CIOs. For instance analytics will help the organization to
better forecast products range and provide analysis for future investments in different business
areas. BI helps to understand customer demands and provide inputs for demand shaping. Human
machine interface (HMI) is another area where companies such as Jindal Steel have adopted
cloud model for their HMI applications to quickly recover their ROI. HMI refers to interfacing
IT systems like ERP with manufacturing executing systems (MES) and plant automation. In
addition to the above applications, the other areas where cloud enhances manufacturing
effectiveness are in data warehousing, information security, green IT, and many others.
Cloud adoption in Indian IT industry: The research by IDC titled Indian Cloud Market
Overview 2011-2016 provides estimates that Indian cloud market will grow over 70% from
2014. The cloud is transforming Indian IT industry and some of the highlights include,

With increased number of IT companies and ISPs in India, cloud IaaS model is helping
SMEs to have access to latest infrastructure thus reducing their in-house infrastructure costs.

PaaS model provides immense advantages for software companies. PaaS supports
developers with different development platforms and in turn providing savings to the company
from heavy capital expenditure.

Organizations big and small are having advantages by adopting SaaS model. For
example, Indian companies by implementing applications such as SAP Business, Office 365, etc.
tend to benefit greatly from the hassles of maintaining IT applications to result in cost savings.
In addition to the above highlighted sectors, cloud service models are used in other industry
domains such as finance and banking, advertising, health care, etc., slowly but steadily. The slow
pace can be attributed to certain barriers such as inadequate knowledge of cloud technologies,
connectivity issues and customer awareness in terms of ROI in cloud adoption.
The key drivers for IT growth in India is highlighted by the growing acceptance of cloud based
solutions, embracing merging technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, mobile
technologies (3G, 4G) and fuelled by Indian governments initiatives for a digital India. In a
recent research done by Zinnov Management Consulting titled Indias Domestic IT Market

Landscape 2015, the estimated Indian IT market is at $36 billion in 2015 with 14% growth to
reach $65 billion in 2020. The report explains that,

The Indian governments Digital India project provides potential opportunities for cloud
adoption at a cost of $19 billion between 2014-2018

The estimated growth of public cloud market is pegged at $7.4-7.6 billion and private
cloud at the rate of $7 billion by 2020
The above studies and data indicate that cloud adoption is fast catching up in India and
transforming IT services to provide a new direction. In addition to this, new mobile technologies
like SMAC (Social Mobile Analytics Cloud) are used by business organizations to gain
competitive advantage and growth. NASSCOMs Perspective 2020 report is highly optimistic
about Indias progress in mobility, broadband and internet connectivity over the next 2 years and
beyond. From the above, it is more apparent that, cloud offers the most ideal infrastructure for
operating a variety of IT applications across all types of organizations in India.

Current IT architecture has led organizations world-wide to allocate nearly

70% of their IT budgets to keep existing applications running, leaving scope for only
30% to create new value. With increased business complexity and declining profit
margins, companies are now looking at cloud computing as new IT business model
to create more value, achieve cost benefits and business agility. Cloud computing is
witnessing robust adoption across the world, especially amongst developing
markets such as APAC and Latin America with countries from APAC such as India,
China, Australia and Singapore leading the way.
GrowthPraxis research indicates that cloud computing market in APAC is expected to
reach $6.2 billion by 2015. Cloud computing market in India is expected to cross the
$ 1 billion mark by 2014, growing at a CAGR of 32% between 2011 and 2015. Cloud
computing provides obvious benefits to small and medium enterprises in India in
terms of CAPEX and reduced application deployment time. SMEs have no existing or
legacy IT setup, providing them an opportunity to leap frog to the new business
model. The migration approach of large enterprises towards cloud computing,

however, remains to be seen. The report provides an overview on cloud computing

market across the world with details on Indian cloud computing market. Report
provides in-depth coverage of current cloud computing adoption scenario by large
enterprises in India and future market growth projections

Investments in government Sector:

The Government of India is embracing cloud computing technology for
expanding its e-governance initiatives throughout the country. In India, the
focus of e-governance is to reduce corruption and ensure the government
schemes are reaching people living in rural areas of the country. Further, egovernance services ensure quicker service delivery and eliminate the
involvement of middlemen who tend to capitalize on loopholes for quick
money by means of exploiting people. To mention one initiative, the
Department of Electronics and Information Technology under the Ministry of
Communications and IT is highly optimistic of adopting cloud computing in
governance and has made plans for the creation of IT enabled services,
applications and policies towards achieving full benefits in different
government initiatives. The department plans to offer solutions by electronic
means, promote R & D initiatives, solutions for cyber-security and National
Information Infrastructure, develop IT policies and so on, where cloud
computing will be used extensively.

Conclusions and Future Directions

Cloud computing business potential and contribution to already aggravating
carbon emission
from ICT, has lead to a series of discussion whether Cloud computing is really
green. It is
forecasted that the environmental footprint from data centers will triple
between 2002 and 2020, which is currently 7.8 billion tons of CO2 per year.
There are reports on Green IT analysis of Clouds and datacenters that show
that Cloud computing is Green, while others show that it will lead to
alarming increase in Carbon emission. Thus, in this chapter, we first analyzed

the benefits offered by Cloud computing by studying its fundamental

definitions and benefits, the services it offers to end users, and its
deployment model. Then, we discussed the components of Clouds
thatcontribute to carbon emission and the features of Clouds that make it
Green. We also discussed several research efforts and technologies that
increase the energy efficiency of various aspects of Clouds. For this study, we
identified several unexplored areas that can help in
maximizing the energy efficiency of Clouds from a holistic perspective. After
analyzing the
shortcoming of previous solutions, we proposed a Green Cloud Framework
and presented some
results for its validation. Even though our Green Cloud framework embeds
various features to
make Cloud computing much more Green, there are still many technological
solutions are
required to make it a reality:
First efforts are required in designing software at various levels (OS,
compiler, algorithm
and application) that facilitates system wide energy efficiency. Although SaaS
providers
may still use already implemented software, they need to analyze the
runtime behavior of
applications. The gathered empirical data can be used in energy efficient
scheduling and
resource provisioning. The compiler and operating systems need to be
designed in such a
way that resources can be allocated to application based on the required
level of
performance, and thus performance versus energy consumption tradeoff can
be managed.
To enable the green Cloud datacenters, the Cloud providers need to
understand and
measure existing datacenter power and cooling designs, power consumptions
of servers

and their cooling requirements, and equipment resource utilization to achieve

maximum
efficiency. In addition, modeling tools are required to measure the energy
usage of all the components and services of Cloud, from user PC to
datacenter where Cloud services
are hosted.
For designing the holistic solutions in the scheduling and resource
provisioning of
applications within the datacenter, all the factors such as cooling, network,
memory, and
CPU should be considered. For instance, consolidation of VMs even though
effective
technique to minimize overall power usage of datacenter, also raises the
issue related to
necessary redundancy and placement geo-diversity required to be
maintained to fulfill
SLAs with users. It is obvious that last thing Cloud provider will want is to lose
their
reputation by their bad service or violation of promised service requirements.
Last but not the least, the responsibility also goes to both providers and
customers to
make sure that emerging technologies do not bring irreversible changes
which can bring
threat to the health of human society. The way end users interact with the
application also
has a very real cost and impact. For example, purging of unsolicited emails
can
eliminates energy wasted in storage and network. Similarly, if Cloud providers
want to
provide a truly green and renewable Cloud, they must deploy their
datacenters near
renewable energy sources and maximize the Green energy usage in their
already
established datacenters. Before adding new technologies such as
virtualization, proper
analysis of overhead should be done real benefit in terms of energy efficiency.