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  • Clean tech options push Nova Scotia businesses into the cloud

Clean tech options push Nova Scotia businesses into the cloud

Friday, June 14, 2013

As companies seek out ways to save money and the environment at the same time, finding ways to reduce emissions and carbon footprints often come to mind. Reducing the overall size of a corporate data center is one of the fastest and most financially rewarding ways of making a business more eco-friendly, but there are many different ways of accomplishing this feat. Isolating the most beneficial solutions means looking into some of the most innovative technologies currently taking Canada by storm.

According to Northwestern University and the Berkeley National Laboratory, the answer to these economic and environmental questions lies in cloud computing. This resource allows businesses to migrate all of their operational and archive information to digital infrastructure, drastically slashing the size of their physical data centers while boosting collaboration and remote working possibilities. By turning a centralized office into a work-from-home corporations, companies can count the amount of greenhouse gas reduction their employees put toward their overall carbon reduction. Since personnel no longer need to commute, the amount of emissions firms are responsible for generating are significantly decreased.

"What we found overall is that by hosting services on the cloud as opposed to locally, the savings are pretty robust," said study chief author Eric Masanet. "Our public model allows us to look forward and make informed decisions."

Cost and eco savings
What's more, Clean Technica stated that changing from hardware to cloud storage can help businesses reduce their total electrical usage by up to 23 billion kilowatt-hours per year. This represents a significant cost and environmental savings, with companies in some cases able to totally remove their office locations and operate entirely out of the cloud.

This is one of the biggest trends in Canadian corporate landscapes as it is, IT World Canada wrote. The source stated that 31 per cent of businesses are using hybrid solutions that combine physical and cloud architecture, while 55 per cent are relying on offsite storage vendors to handle all their operations. IDC Canada's study results show that a majority of companies are interested already in the cost savings associated with the cloud, but as more entities in Nova Scotia especially become increasingly concerned with environmental impacts, switching to clean technology like the cloud could see even greater levels of adoption.

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Clean Tech