Nov 3 2008
Virtual Strategy Magazine, the leading online publication for virtual environments, today published a report by noted industry analyst Steve Denegri titled, "Microsoft and Google: Cloud Computing Dominance Through Renewable Energy." This report illustrates how cloud data centers and renewable energy make for a potent combination that may forever change the data center computing competitive landscape. These computing giants are in a race to construct cloud facilities: mega-sized data centers that are "off the grid", powered by massive amounts of renewable energy.
“Given that the giants in the computing industry have the ability to run their own data centers at such ultra-low costs structures that only a scant few will be able to duplicate, the pursuit of a sufficiently ‘green’ data center is an unending and impossible mission,” writes Denegri. Denegri deduces that cloud computing vendor strategies will make it increasingly difficult, over the long term, for companies to justify the management of their own infrastructure. “In my view,” writes Denegri, “the concept of ‘cloud computing’ will be forever remembered as the access road that brought computing to the finish line.”
“The green data center is, indeed, a dead end,” Denegri concludes, “unless your company can construct a facility that is so large that it allows your company to work directly with a supplier of renewable energy to lock in long-term electricity rates at a fixed cost per kilowatt-hour, then your data center will eventually face the double whammy of increasing utility bills and burdensome carbon taxes. While also benefiting the environment, companies like Microsoft and Google are leveraging renewable energy to achieve their strategic objectives, forever changing the competitive landscape.”