[New Wave] Cloud Accelerates Sustainable Management

ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) management is emerging as a crucial indicator in the evaluation of global companies. As the core of ESG management converges on eco-friendly strategies, interest in sustainable management is also heating up in the IT sector. Sustainability even influences decisions on whether IT companies operate their own data centers or migrate to the cloud.

When a company operates its own data center, it requires a large number of computers and storage devices that consume significant amounts of electricity. Because temperature and humidity control systems must run 24 hours a day, data centers become so-called "electricity guzzlers."

Cloud computing is also composed of such data centers, but it virtualizes central processing units (CPUs), memory, storage, and more, providing companies with the resources they need, whenever they need them, in the desired quantities. This increases the efficiency of the data centers operating cloud services. Due to the nature of the cloud business, which can only generate profits by maximizing infrastructure efficiency, service providers do not let cloud data center equipment sit idle. Since cloud services allow users worldwide to access resources as needed, a user in Korea during the day can rent equipment from a U.S. cloud data center at night at a low cost, and vice versa. Because services are available 24 hours a day worldwide, the efficiency of data centers is further enhanced.

According to research by 451 Research, the energy efficiency of AWS data centers, which lead cloud services, is 3.6 times higher than the median of U.S. corporate data centers. Converting the electricity used in data centers to renewable energy is also very important. Amazon is expanding solar and wind energy production facilities to achieve its goals of using 80% renewable energy in data centers by 2024 and 100% by 2030. Currently, it produces more than 6.5 GW of power, which is used in AWS data centers and others. Considering reductions in power consumption due to server efficiency and renewable energy purchases, AWS data centers reduce carbon emissions by about 88% compared to traditional corporate data centers.

Efforts to drastically reduce the power consumption of cloud-based data centers are also noteworthy. Cloud providers are creating and supplying low-power, ARM-based custom semiconductors. Instead of using X86-based CPUs provided by Intel or AMD, which are commonly found in desktops and laptops, they produce and provide ARM-based chips used in mobile phones. For example, servers using AWS’s ARM-based chipset called "Graviton" have at least 2.7 times and up to 3.4 times better power efficiency compared to traditional X86-based CPUs. Typical mobile and web service companies show 40% better price-performance compared to X86. Sendbird, a domestic unicorn startup providing global chat services, also reported reducing costs by up to 42% after migrating to Graviton-based virtual servers.

With ESG management becoming a mainstream trend, I want to emphasize that simply moving from traditional data centers to the cloud can drastically reduce carbon emissions. Migrating to custom silicon-based virtual servers built directly by cloud providers can lower the power consumption of cloud data centers while also reducing cloud usage costs. ESG management is not far away; it is right here, close to us.

Yoon Seok-chan, AWS Senior Tech Evangelist