Cloud can cut orgs' carbon emissions by 30%

Australian organisations can reduce their carbon emissions by 20–30% annually by moving to green cloud services, according to the inaugural Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) ‘Tech Pulse’ report, covering the cloud.

The report estimates that by 2030, sustainable cloud infrastructure will produce up to 40% in energy savings and up to 80% in carbon emission reductions compared to conventional data centres. It also predicts that by this time, renewable energy will power up to three-quarters of Australia’s data centres.

Organisations are already using cloud-enabled data analysis and reporting to support areas including air and water quality management, recycling and wastewater management, and employee engagement and wellbeing, the report found.

For example, cloud technology is helping to drive the retail industry’s move towards sustainability, while public service agencies see the cloud as one way to help drive an emissions reduction agenda. The cloud is also driving transformation in the healthcare industry even though the sector is only in the early stages of cloud adoption.

The move to cloud environments is meanwhile facilitating greater AI adoption, with 75% of organisations surveyed by TCS having invested heavily in AI and machine learning capabilities over the past two years and 78% planning to do so in the next two years.

The report found that by 2025, the total number of AI workloads in the cloud is on track to increase by 30%. The banking and retails sectors are expected to see the biggest increase in usage of cloud-based AI in the next three years, at 50%.

AI and machine learning have applications in sectors including health care, where the technologies are helping power health tracking apps, online symptom checkers, virtual hospital agents and novel treatments for conditions such as diabetes.

Meanwhile, in the finance sector Australians can expect to see more AI-powered robo-advisors that cater to the digital preferences of savvy young investors, while in transport the technologies are helping pave the way for driverless cars and trucks, self-organising fleets, smart containers and autonomous taxis.

The report also found that multicloud and hybrid cloud models have become the most common IT models, with respondents citing benefits including higher agility (40%), lower total cost of ownership (30%) and increased reliability (30%).

The multicloud model offers the benefit of cost-effective redundancy, failover and disaster recovery options, the report states. It predicts that over the next five years, organisations using multi-cloud will receive benefits including up to 40% faster delivery of IT initiatives and up to 25% lower total cost of ownership.

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