Even though it has managed to become the major strength of a majority of businesses in the current times, cloud computing continues to suffer from issues that become a problem for its smooth operations. In some rare cases, these issues have even affected the way through which cloud computer benefits its users. Energy crises is one of these issues. These issues are posing to be a real challenge and it would not be wrong to say that they are becoming the real life ghosts too.
According to an assignment writing firm, there is no denying that computing takes in a lot of watts; it has been estimated that about 1 percent of all electricity generated goes to cloud computing. Experts are estimated that by the end of this decade, we could be devoting 8 percent or more to this cause. The question is how much energy we can dedicate to all this computing and how we can avert this looming crisis. Many experts have called it the cloud’s dirty secret, its need for so much energy to sustain and move things in the right direction.
This figure is expected to grow over the next decade. Experts are of the opinion that the world may need as much as 8% of all the electricity to power the future cloud and this is no joke. It is a matter of concern as this just a conservative estimate considering the energy cloud is already consuming and how dependent we are becoming on it. By 2030, the increase in use of technology and cloud will be much more than it is today. With widespread adoption of smart digital currencies blending money with code and rise of real-time video in cloud, its requirement for energy will also increase which needs a proper solution.
Before moving forward to understand how energy crisis is making things tough for cloud computing sector, it is necessary to understand how cloud computing works and serves it clients. In simple terms, cloud computing is the delivery of on-demand computing services — from applications to storage and processing power, over the internet and on a pay-as-you-go basis. It is important to understand how much of our computing is happening in the cloud. There is no way to measure it but it is sufficient to say a lot.
Providers of public cloud services alone take in more than a quarter of a trillion US dollars every year which gives a little idea of how much dependent we have become on cloud computing. Amazon, Google and Microsoft maintain a massive data centers around the world. Apple and Facebook too run similar facilities that are stuffed with high-core-count CPUs, sporting terabytes of RAM and petabytes of storage and this enough to raise alarm on what related complications we might be facing in the coming year.
Rather than purchasing and owning their computing infrastructures or data centers, the companies have the facility to rent and access anything from applications to storage from a cloud service provider. The best thing about opting for this is that large as well as small organizations can avoid the upfront costs and complexity of owning and maintaining their IT infrastructures. They can simply pay for what they are using and when they use it without getting into the hassle of buying equipment and hiring people to do it for them and running into any trouble.
At the right cost, the cloud computing services provide them the facility of staying tension free and getting the desired services most efficiently. These service providers can also benefit from significant economies of scale by delivering the same services to a wide range of customers. However, there are times when timely and efficient delivery of services is not easy and cloud computing sector ends up facing trouble related to energy problems.
Cloud Computing and Energy Crisis:
As technology is becoming more and more dependent on energy, experts fear there it could lead to energy crisis which could affect cloud computing. As the rising demand for computing collides with decreasing efficiencies, we seem to be hurtling towards a brick and it is a fact that the entire planet’s electricity generation cannot be used for supporting the cloud and if things are not managed timely, it could lead to a crisis that might become too challenging to handle.
While the immediate and only solution seems to be the processing of the data at the edge before it goes into the cloud, it is not the ultimate end. It will shift the burden from one end to another, and only help to buy more time for rethinking how to manage computing in the face of limited power resources. It has also been estimated that over 60% of total system energy gets spent moving data between main memory and compute, on an average. Right now we are just scratching the surface of what is at the device and circuit level but must keep in mind what is coming in the future and take proper measures to avoid this energy crisis most effectively.
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Software and hardware engineering are not doubt trying to reorient their design practices around power efficiency. They will have to come up with more codes but these codes will also encounter problems and challenges that will need effective and lasting solutions. Cloud computing providers can build a server farm comprising thousands and thousands of services but it is critical to deliver the appropriate application performance to customers while at the same time offering efficient energy to these servers to keep them working and delivering the desired service.
There are many who believe crisis to be a hyperbole and choose to ignore it but this is not something that should be given a back seat. Considering the major problems it can land us into if cloud computing sector gets affected due to power shortage, this crisis is very real and must be addressed the right way very soon. As organizations strive to reduce costs and maximize the resources, they are faced with an increase in computing demands and rising energy costs. It is becoming necessary for organizations to solve the cost and resource issue and ensure that the costs in trying to address the energy crisis do not exceed beyond their budgets.