Cloud Computing for Sustainable Practices

🌍 Cloud Efficiency Isn’t Just About Cost, It’s About Sustainability In healthcare SaaS, we talk a lot about cloud cost optimization, but here’s a question I rarely hear: 💭 What if efficiency wasn’t just financial, but environmental? Every workload, every redundant instance, every over-provisioned environment consumes energy. And as more healthcare platforms scale globally, our FinOps practices are quietly shaping our carbon footprint. ⚙️ Cloud Efficiency = Sustainability When we right-size workloads, automate scaling, and optimize data retention, we’re not just saving money, we’re cutting energy waste. That’s why my team now treats sustainability metrics as part of FinOps accountability: • Idle resources eliminated = lower carbon impact • Tiered storage = less energy drain • Smart scheduling = fewer unnecessary compute cycles In one project, those small actions cut cloud waste by over 25%, and the energy savings were equivalent to powering 15 homes for a year. 🧭 The Next Evolution of FinOps FinOps 1.0 was about cost transparency. FinOps 2.0 is about business alignment. FinOps 3.0 will be about sustainability accountability, because the cleanest cloud is the most efficient one. 💬 Curious: Have you started tracking the sustainability impact of your cloud operations? If not, what would it take to make that part of your FinOps strategy? #HealthcareSaaS #FinOps #CloudOps #Sustainability #CIO #CISO #DigitalHealth #CloudStrategy #GreenIT #HealthTech

One of the most important laws of frugal architecture is that you can’t optimize what you can’t measure. I learned this long before cloud computing. Growing up in Amsterdam during the energy crisis of the 1970s, we had things like car-free Sundays and rationed energy, but the detail that always stuck with me was closer to home. Households with their energy meter on the main floor of their homes used significantly less energy than those with it hidden in the basement. The same style of house, in the same city, yet dramatically different behaviour. About as clear of a signal as you can get that seeing data changes what you do with it. For years, in the absence of better sustainability metrics, usage (or consumption) was the best proxy we had. The meter was in the basement. With the AWS Sustainability Console, we bring the meter to your “living room”. It gives your builders direct access to Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions data, broken down by service and Region, exportable via API, without ever touching sensitive cost and billing data. The right data, to the right people, through the right door. When carbon emission becomes just another metric in your observability stack sitting next to latency, cost, and error rates, it stops being a compliance exercise and starts becoming an architectural discipline. The world we are building in the cloud is the world we are leaving to our children. Measure it like it matters. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/efFjU7hG

📌Turning Waste into Warmth: A Smarter Way Forward 🔁🔥 Finland is transforming how cities use energy by integrating sustainability directly into digital infrastructure. New underground data centers in Helsinki are designed not only to host servers but also to recycle the immense heat they generate. Instead of venting this waste energy, it’s captured and redirected into district heating systems that warm nearby homes and buildings. This closed-loop approach allows the same energy that powers cloud computing to heat thousands of apartments, reducing reliance on fossil fuels and cutting urban carbon emissions dramatically. Data centers, once known for their high energy consumption, are becoming key players in renewable urban ecosystems. This is the kind of circular solution modern facilities must aspire to. By integrating technology, engineering, and smart planning, even high-energy systems like data centres can become contributors to a greener city. For facilities and estates professionals, the message is clear: Sustainability isn’t always about new resources — it’s about using what we already have, better. The project underscores Finland’s leadership in green innovation — turning what was once environmental waste into community benefit. As cities worldwide search for climate solutions, this model shows how technology and sustainability can work hand in hand to reshape the future of energy. A powerful reminder of what’s possible when we rethink infrastructure with efficiency and environmental responsibility at the core. Sources: ✍️TechTimes #GreenEnergy #FinlandInnovation #SustainableCities #DataCenters #CleanTechnology #Infrastructure #Environmental #Technology

Waaaaay back when I started my career, a personal organizer was my only option for keeping my schedule straight. I remember handwriting everything from business meetings to grocery lists - and if that little notebook was ever misplaced, I would have been lost! I've been through the hieroglyphics of the Palm Pilot to the small keyboard of the Blackberry. These days, tech makes scheduling and connecting with people far easier (and with far less risk of me losing valuable information). But none of this would be possible without data centers - they’re the backbone of our digital lives. We rely on them constantly, without even realizing it (for instance, you’re using a data center right now to read this!) These are some of the ordinary tasks I depend on them for: 📱 Video chatting with my daughter, who’s away at college 🏀 Confirming the time of my son’s basketball game ☔ Double checking the weather 🎁 Using Amazon's Rufus to buy just the right gift for a family member 🎟️ Downloading tickets for a game at Climate Pledge Arena Every single one of those moments - the connections, the peace of mind, the celebrations - wouldn’t happen without a data center. And we’re committed to using sustainable practices and systems in the data centers we operate. Some examples of what that looks like:   ▶️ Improving energy efficiency. Just like car manufacturers can design engines to get the most out of every gallon of gasoline, we design our data centers to get the most out of every unit of electricity - minimizing waste and maximizing computing power. That’s measured through Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE). A “perfect score” PUE is 1.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers achieved a global of 1.15 in 2024, with our best-performing site reaching 1.04! Innovating in water efficiency. We lead the industry in water efficiency, and are 53% of the way to our goal of returning more water to communities than we consume across our data center operations. ▶️ Thoughtful data center construction. We're using lower-carbon concrete and steel in construction, reducing embodied carbon by up to 35%. ▶️ Carbon-free energy. We’ve invested in over 600 renewable energy projects globally. ▶️ Reuse and recycling. We're extending equipment lifespans and recovering materials, with over 99% of decommissioned racks are diverted from landfills. Data centers help make modern life possible, and I look forward to the new year bringing even more new innovations. You can learn about our progress here: https://lnkd.in/gkynx6aY How do you use a data center in daily life? Drop it in the comments!  

Is AI's Growth Sustainable? How to Make Generative Applications Greener. The rise of generative AI tools like ChatGPT and others has been remarkable, but their environmental impact is often overlooked. The data center industry, housing these systems, accounts for up to 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with energy consumption doubling every two years. Hyperscale cloud providers like Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure play a significant role in powering these models, leading to major carbon footprints. Understanding the carbon footprint lifecycle of AI models is crucial. Large generative models consume extensive energy during training, and fine-tuning can be a more energy-efficient option. Inference sessions, though less energy-intensive, involve many more sessions, contributing to ongoing energy consumption. Efforts to reduce energy usage include employing less computationally expensive approaches like TinyML and using large models only when significantly valuable. To make AI greener, companies can use existing models from providers instead of creating new ones. Fine-tuning existing models on specific content domains consumes less energy and provides more value. Utilizing energy sources from carbon-friendly regions and monitoring carbon emissions can significantly reduce AI's environmental impact. Reusing models and resources, incorporating AI activity into carbon monitoring, and encouraging green AI practices are crucial steps in promoting sustainability. 1. Prioritize Fine-Tuning: Instead of training new generative models from scratch, focus on fine-tuning existing models for specific content domains. Fine-tuning consumes less energy and provides more value to businesses. 2. Explore Energy-Conserving Methods: Adopt energy-conserving computational approaches like TinyML for processing data. TinyML allows running ML models on low-powered edge devices, significantly reducing energy consumption. 3. Re-use and Open Source Models: Opt for reusing open-source models instead of creating new ones. Recycling tech can lower the carbon impact of AI practices and reduce the need for energy-intensive model development. 4. Monitor Carbon Emissions: Include AI activity in carbon monitoring practices to understand the carbon footprint of AI-related operations. Share footprint numbers to make informed decisions about AI partnerships. 5. Choose Green Energy Sources: Select cloud providers and data centers that prioritize environmentally friendly power resources. Running AI models in regions with carbon-free energy sources can significantly reduce operational emissions. Have you already considered the impact of using compute-heavy applications on our planet? Are you tracking the impact of compute in your sustainability report? #genai #aivalue #sustainableai #sustainability

🌊💻 What if the future of cloud computing lived beneath the waves? In a breathtaking experiment, Microsoft launched Project #Natick - submerging a data center with 864 servers in a capsule off the coast of Scotland. Powered entirely by renewable energy from the Orkney Islands, the project showcased a sustainable and efficient approach to data infrastructure. !! Why underwater? ✅ Cooler Environment: Oceans act as natural coolants, reducing the need for energy-hungry air conditioning. ✅ Reliability: The sealed, oxygen-free environment significantly reduces hardware failure. ✅ Sustainability: Paired with renewable energy sources like offshore wind and tidal power, this unlocks a greener future for data storage. ✅ Proximity to People: Nearly half the world’s population lives near the coast — making underwater data centers ideal for reducing latency. What started as a daring question — “Can a data center survive underwater?” turned into an exciting proof-of-concept that challenges how we think about cloud infrastructure. 🌍⚡ Imagine the oceans not just as natural wonders, but as digital frontiers powering the next era of computing 🚀

Most data centers sit on land, consuming huge amounts of electricity and water to stay cool. Some are now being placed underwater to use the ocean itself 🌊 In China, experimental underwater data centers are being deployed to take advantage of natural ocean cooling. Instead of relying heavily on air conditioning and freshwater systems, these sealed server units use the surrounding seawater to regulate temperature efficiently. This approach helps reduce energy consumption and significantly cuts down on the massive water demand typically required by traditional facilities 💻 What makes this innovation remarkable is how it reimagines infrastructure by working with nature instead of against it. As demand for AI and cloud computing continues to grow, solutions like this could make large scale data processing more sustainable while lowering environmental impact. It represents a shift toward smarter, resource efficient technology ❤️ While technology often strains natural resources, ideas like this show how it can evolve to coexist more responsibly with the planet 🌍

The latest Bloomberg report is a wake-up call for tech. U.S. grid regulators warn that surging AI-driven data-center demand, up 20 gigawatts since last winter, is pushing large parts of the country toward a higher risk of blackouts this winter. Some regions cannot even power new data centers that already exist, and others may face shortages during extreme weather. And countless new data center projects have been announced. This is not just a grid problem. It is a software problem. Too much of today’s tech stack is inefficient and cobbled together. We have tolerated wasteful architectures, redundant compute, and “good enough” engineering for far too long. Historically, inefficiency was mostly a cost issue. Now it is a capacity issue, an environmental issue, and a societal issue. And if for some reason you do not care about the climate implications, care about the business implications: inefficiency drives higher costs, degraded performance, and frustrated customers. Better engineering is better for business, better for users, and better for the planet. At SustainableIT.org, where I serve as president, we can help technology leaders govern AI responsibly by embedding sustainability and efficiency into their operating models. Moments like this make it clear why that work is so essential. And as CMO at Couchbase, we see firsthand how much waste can be eliminated when organizations run on a modern, memory-first, highly efficient enterprise AI data platform instead of stitching together legacy systems. You can do more with less power, less infrastructure, and far fewer operational headaches and governance issues, all while delivering faster performance, greater scalability, and lower total cost for customers. If we want AI and modern digital experiences to scale sustainably, tech companies must treat efficiency as a first-class KPI, not an afterthought. That means smarter caching, more efficient databases, leaner models, optimized infrastructure, and a culture that values engineering rigor instead of duct-taped growth. The grid cannot keep up with software that burns power simply because it can. Efficiency is no longer optional. It is our responsibility. #Innovation #AI #TechLeadership #SustainableIT #ResponsibleAI https://lnkd.in/g2kc9pcS

The growth of AI is powered by the physical hardware inside our data centers -- but that doesn't have to mean rising emissions or a linear path to e-waste! My colleagues Nathan Gassmann and Michael Ellis just shared a FANTASTIC deep dive into how we’ve spent the last decade shifting toward a truly circular economy 🔄 By treating decommissioned servers as repositories of value rather than waste, we are proving that high-performance computing can be both resilient and sustainable. In 2024 alone, our teams harvested approximately 8.8 million components for re-inventory or resale, including over 3 million hard drives that were securely wiped and given a second life (!!!) Our work focuses on moving beyond passive support to make circularity a core operational reality: 🟢 We are extending the lifespan of our infrastructure by reusing and repairing hardware to reduce the demand for new raw materials. 🟢 Our teams have developed a unified language to articulate the business value of circularity, ensuring it is a strategic priority across every function. 🟢 Through the Circular Electronics Design Guide bootcamp, we are refining how we design for the entire lifecycle of a server from the very beginning. 🟢 We continue to bridge the gap between corporate ambition and daily operations by scaling these reverse logistics channels globally. Circularity is, at its best a way of operating that conserves our resources...while ALSO reducing carbon emissions. We are both way into this journey and at the same time just getting started - and hope our latest report, "Bridging the Gap," serves as a blueprint for the rest of the industry :) Read more about our progress and lessons learned here: https://lnkd.in/gmFyhq2w #GoogleCloud #CircularEconomy #Sustainability #DataCenters #ZeroWaste

📢 𝐄𝐱𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐀𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐭🚨 Our latest study “𝗡𝗲𝘁𝟬𝗔𝗜𝗖𝗹𝗼𝘂𝗱”, published in IEEE 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗠𝗮𝗴𝗮𝘇𝗶𝗻𝗲, sheds light on the utilisation of 𝗔𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 (𝗔𝗜𝗼𝗧) for 𝗖𝗹𝗼𝘂𝗱 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 to enable 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗯𝗼𝗻 𝗡𝗲𝘂𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 to contribute towards the 𝐍𝐇𝐒 𝐍𝐞𝐭 𝐙𝐞𝐫𝐨 𝐚𝐦𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 while managing 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞'𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡. 🤝 Kudos to Han Wang for leading it 𝑯𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒍𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒔: 1️⃣ Design and implement an AI-driven framework, 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝟬𝗔𝗜𝗖𝗹𝗼𝘂𝗱 that dynamically schedules workloads and allocates resources using 𝗔𝗜 to minimise energy consumption and carbon emissions while maintaining QoS. 2️⃣ Integrate the framework within a cloud-edge 𝗔𝗜𝗼𝗧 architecture, proposing a comprehensive solution for achieving sustainable computing goals in modern distributed environments. 3️⃣ Validate the proposed framework through a real-world IoT healthcare application that uses the Feature Tokenizer Transformer (𝗙𝗧-𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗿) for disease prediction, demonstrating its practical effectiveness in enhancing both sustainability and service quality. 4️⃣ Demonstrate the potential to significantly improve resource utilisation and reduce energy consumption while maintaining robust service quality for AIoT applications, highlighting actionable recommendations to achieve net zero targets in 𝗜𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 (𝗜𝗖𝗧) infrastructures. 🔗 𝑳𝒊𝒏𝒌 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒍𝒆: https://lnkd.in/eEsKx-A8 🔗 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝟬𝗔𝗜𝗖𝗹𝗼𝘂𝗱 𝒊𝒔 𝒓𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒆𝒅 𝒐𝒏 𝑮𝒊𝒕𝑯𝒖𝒃: https://lnkd.in/eiEycSQT 🔬💡 🤝 Looking forward to furthering this research and its impact on future healthcare and computing systems. #Cloudcomputing #Machinelearning #Sustainablecomputing #AI #researchpaper #computing #edge #Cloud #applications #IoT #computerscience #Research #industry #academics #journals #journal #qmul #postdoc #Scientificresearch #conference #PhD #university #publications #Computing #academiclife #ArtificialIntelligence #academia #engineering #Academic #NetZero #ieee