In the third episode, Katie is joined by David Larkins, a digital product and delivery lead at Moorhouse, with a successful track record delivering complex, global digital transformation projects. Prepare to hear all things cloud computing and sustainability.

Is cloud the answer to everyone’s sustainability problems? Listen now to learn more. 

00:02

Welcome to MoorBytes, a short -form podcast brought to you by Moorhouse. In each episode, we'll be discussing trends and insights we really care about and breaking these down into digestible chunks.

00:16

In this first series, we'll be taking a deep dive into the often complex but always fascinating relationship between digital and sustainability. Thanks for joining us again on our latest episode of MoorBytes.

00:30

Today, we'll be joined by David, discussing all things sustainability in the cloud. This is something of interest to all organizations who work digitally and hopefully this episode will provide some food for thought when considering cloud migration.

00:46

So welcome, David. David heads up our digital product and delivery team here at Moorhouse and today we are chatting about all things cloud computing and sustainability. Migrating to the cloud is something we've heard about for quite some time now, but David, is cloud everything it's cracked up to be?

01:03

Hi, Katie, great to be chatting about this. So there was a big boom where everyone thought it would be the answer for everything, but that has started to settle now when people have realized that just simply lifting and shifting into the cloud isn't cost effective in many instances.

01:17

But for the purpose of this conversation, talking about sustainability, there are benefits even for a lift and shift approach. So it might be a good idea to talk through sustainability in the cloud from a foundation level, a technology level and a services level.

01:30

So if an organization is deciding to take the lift and shift approach and migrate to the cloud, what do you think is important to think about in regards to their sustainability agenda? So I can get into a few more specific examples where the cloud can support sustainability.

01:46

But as mentioned before, even on a lift and shift, there are areas where utilizing large public cloud providers are sustainable. So because the big three providers are scrutinized more publicly, as well as their need for marketing and genuine unique selling points, they have aggressive.

02:00

sustainability measures. So rather than an organization having to look at their own tech estate and having to modernize with sustainability considerations, we can utilize public cloud and take advantage of theirs.

02:10

02:23

02:37

So I guess that means that organizations, if deciding on cloud migration, can look at the sustainability credentials of those three main providers that you just discussed to assess how well they align with their internal ESG goals.

02:52

So circling back beyond using the basics of public cloud, are there any new technologies which can help? drive forward and organization sustainability goals? Yeah, so something which has seen a big drive recently is the introduction of edge computing.

03:08

So not exactly cloud computing, but very complementary and worth discussing here. So edge computing is where the computing effort is made close to where the output is. So for example, hot topics at the moment, such as self -driving cars and autonomous robots, the computing is done on the robot or a device nearby to provide that real -time analysis.

03:25

And then certain information is sent back to the cloud for aggregation. So from a sustainability perspective, having the computing done locally means that there are significantly less data transfer, which has sustainably impacts in and of itself.

03:39

However, what I find slightly more interesting in this space is how each computing can support other sustainability initiatives, such as microgrids, which are local power grids. Thus, sustainable not only because they run off renewable energy a lot of the time, but because they provide powerful local services that are more efficient in their energy transfer.

03:57

Edge computing means that energy has been consumed locally, which assists in the microgrid planning as compared to very large centralized cloud data centers where the energy is powering services distant from that data center.

04:11

So here we are potentially looking at the shift from local data centers to central cloud computing, and then back to more sustainable localized solutions in edge computing, which is really interesting.

04:25

So you've given us an example of new technology. What about some advances in the services of cloud providers? Is there anything here to support on a sustainability front? Yeah, so we talked about lift and shift being more sustainable purely through the design of large data centers.

04:42

However, advances in the design of native cloud applications are also having an impact on sustainability. So take serverless architecture as an example. Despite the name, that of course does still utilize servers.

04:53

However, it does so in a very efficient manner. Essentially, it allows your code to run and therefore consume power only... the exact time that it needs it. A good analogy here is that of a caterer. The comparison to the lift and shift we spoke about into cloud would be a caterer renting a commercial kitchen with all the tools and utensils year -round to ensure they have the capacity needed during the peak times,

05:15

so Christmas, wedding seasons, etc. The problem here is that it's expensive and they don't need all of that capacity for the majority of the year. So we see this all the time with retail businesses renting cloud services when they have seasonal fluctuations in demand, but not actually needing those resources for the majority of the year.

05:35

So back to the analogy with a caterer, another option is that they hire space in a shared kitchen where they can book additional time in the kitchen needed during the peak times. So this is more efficient, but they still might only need space in the mornings, for example, but rental is required for the day.

05:52

And this is very similar to the majority of cloud applications we see nowadays where you reserve machines for set time periods. And this not only costs more but obviously uses unnecessary energy which you don't need so less sustainable.

06:07

Yeah however the last option and most efficient option would be if the caterer could magically appear in the kitchen space exactly when they needed it including only the tools required for that exact cake or batch of bread at that time and then as soon as their baking is done the tools in kitchen space disappear as do their costs for renting it freeing up that space for others to use.

06:29

This essentially means that shared kitchen is being utilized as efficiently as possible and this is roughly how serverless computing works. Great analogy there and really interesting way to bring that really complex topic to life.

06:42

So to summarize cloud is good for sustainability from a data center design perspective but also from an application architecture perspective. Is there anything else you want to add as final comments as we round off this episode?

06:56

Yeah I think just the best part about these two angles is that regardless of where an organization is on their journey to cloud there is almost certainly an aspect they can adopt to support their sustainability agenda from a basic lift and shift right through to native application design.

07:12

Thanks for taking the time to walk us through sustainability in the cloud today David. Thanks Katie. Thanks David for taking us through that really interesting discussion today. From thinking about the sustainability agendas of the big three cloud providers right through to imagining localized solutions we have learned about the different ways we can consider sustainability when discussing cloud migration.

07:49

I hope you found that interesting for whatever you are on your journey to cloud and we're looking forward to seeing you next time.