{"id":9873,"date":"2016-11-03T23:04:08","date_gmt":"2016-11-04T03:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/pushing-microsofts-cloud-business-to-carbon-neutral-and-beyond\/"},"modified":"2016-11-03T23:04:08","modified_gmt":"2016-11-04T03:04:08","slug":"pushing-microsofts-cloud-business-to-carbon-neutral-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/pushing-microsofts-cloud-business-to-carbon-neutral-and-beyond\/","title":{"rendered":"Pushing Microsoft\u2019s cloud business to carbon neutral and beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While \u201cThe Cloud\u201d seems like an ephemeral concept, every time a person sends an email, uploads a funny video or \u201clikes\u201d a picture on Facebook, that information has to physically be stored on some sort of durable media somewhere and a computer somewhere has to be able to process that data. Companies like Microsoft store such information and computing horsepower in \u201cdatacenters\u201d which is a fancy word for thousands of hard drives and computers sitting in a building that are connected to the internet.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/zXsoygN_v7A\/maxresdefault.jpg\" width=\"581\" height=\"327\" \/><br \/>\nHard drives and server racks in a Microsoft datacenter.<br \/>\n(https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/zXsoygN_v7A\/maxresdefault.jpg)<\/p>\n<p>As the amount of data generated by and the amount of demand for cloud computing from the collective globe rises, the demand for these datacenters are on the rise too<a href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a>. Microsoft\u2019s cloud offering, \u201cAzure\u201d, has been seeing steady growth in recent years and has been one of the main highlights of the company\u2019s most recent earnings reports with a 116% increase in revenue<a href=\"#_ftn2\" name=\"_ftnref2\">[2]<\/a>. This shift to cloud computing has required it to quickly gain expertise in building and maintaining efficient datacenters.<\/p>\n<p>Today, datacenters across the world are responsible for almost 2% of the global greenhouse gas emissions which puts them in the same ballpark as the entire aviation industry<a href=\"#_ftn3\" name=\"_ftnref3\">[3]<\/a>. As one of the main players in the cloud computing field, amongst competitors like Google, Facebook and Amazon AWS<a href=\"#_ftn4\" name=\"_ftnref4\">[4]<\/a>, Microsoft has a huge incentive to portray an image of climate awareness and actively seek solutions to bring down carbon emissions in its datacenter operations. On top of its stellar cloud software solutions, sustainability focused activities can create huge product differentiation opportunities when courting large customers.<\/p>\n<p>Looking from a purely cost \/ profit perspective, adapting to climate change issues makes sense as well. The majority of datacenter variable costs, after the initial capital investment in infrastructure and PP&amp;E, are generally attributable to two large categories; Utilities and Network costs. From the two categories, utilities end up being nearly 90% of the variable costs which goes towards powering the server racks and the giant cooling systems that keep the datacenter running<a href=\"#_ftn5\" name=\"_ftnref5\">[5]<\/a>. When running over 100 datacenters globally<a href=\"#_ftn6\" name=\"_ftnref6\">[6]<\/a>, any savings in utility costs can be massive. Moreover, any ways to reduce its reliance on volatile oil and gas prices create a huge incentive as well.<\/p>\n<p>Microsoft has fervently pursued carbon neutrality since 2007 and in 2012, it finally achieved its goal of its datacenters being 100% carbon neutral. Externally, datacenters were moved to renewable energy sources and for any cases where renewable sources were not viable, Microsoft bought renewable energy certificates to offset their carbon footprint. Internally, Microsoft tracks its carbon footprint on a per-business-unit basis to help pinpoint specific areas of improvement. Initiatives like these have helped Microsoft \u201creduce carbon emissions by 9.5 million metric tons, purchase 14 billion kilowatt hours of green energy, and cut energy consumption by 10 percent\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn7\" name=\"_ftnref7\">[7]<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Looking forward, Microsoft is committed to going further than just being carbon neutral. It has programs in place to redesign server rack hardware (the enclosures that hold the PCs and hard drives) specifically with power consumption and sustainability in mind as well as programs exploring alternate fuel sources like in-rack fuel cells that could enable datacenters to function completely off the grid<a href=\"#_ftn8\" name=\"_ftnref8\">[8]<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><figure id=\"attachment_9897\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9897\" style=\"width: 365px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2016\/11\/new-server.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-9897\" src=\"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2016\/11\/new-server-300x142.png\" alt=\"file:\/\/\/C:\/Users\/Varun\/Downloads\/Datacenter_Sustainability_Strategy_Brief.pdf\" width=\"365\" height=\"173\" srcset=\"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2016\/11\/new-server-300x142.png 300w, https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2016\/11\/new-server-768x363.png 768w, https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2016\/11\/new-server-600x284.png 600w, https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2016\/11\/new-server.png 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 365px) 100vw, 365px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9897\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">New server racks designed from the ground up for sustainability and lower power consumption.[8]<\/figcaption><\/figure>So far, it seems like Microsoft has tried its best to reduce energy consumption at the supply side. (i.e. the supply of datacenters) It might be interesting to also start looking at ways to reduce the overall demand for datacenters in the first place. Some ideas that could be viable are researching ways to reduce the amount of data storage necessary by partitioning data in a more efficient way across datacenters. Today, every email, video or piece of data that gets stored in a datacenter needs to be backed up (in case of a catastrophic failure of the datacenter) as well as copied to multiple, geographically distributed, datacenters (so that access times for that data are fast across the globe). If there were a set of truly novel ways to compress, partition or otherwise reduce the necessity for these two behaviors, it could reduce demand enough to cause a sizeable drop in the number and size of datacenters worldwide.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, climate change has fundamentally affected the way Microsoft thinks about one of its most profitable businesses causing it to re-think portions of the business from the ground up. While climate change alone may not be the only driver behind its fever, it seems like Microsoft has been able to align its incentive to make a profit with a global incentive to reduce the speed and effects of climate change.<\/p>\n<p>Word Count: 769 words<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> http:\/\/www.us.jll.com\/united-states\/en-us\/research\/data-centers\/trends<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref2\" name=\"_ftn2\">[2]<\/a> https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/Investor\/earnings\/FY-2017-Q1\/press-release-webcast<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref3\" name=\"_ftn3\">[3]<\/a> https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2015\/sep\/25\/server-data-centre-emissions-air-travel-web-google-facebook-greenhouse-gas<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref4\" name=\"_ftn4\">[4]<\/a> http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/the-10-most-important-companies-in-cloud-computing-2012-4?op=1<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref5\" name=\"_ftn5\">[5]<\/a> http:\/\/research.microsoft.com\/en-us\/um\/people\/dmaltz\/papers\/dc-costs-ccr-editorial.pdf<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref6\" name=\"_ftn6\">[6]<\/a> https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bqZrejosqWU<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref7\" name=\"_ftn7\">[7]<\/a> http:\/\/blogs.microsoft.com\/on-the-issues\/2016\/05\/19\/greener-datacenters-brighter-future-microsofts-commitment-renewable-energy\/#IXpiyZsAJw5C54vp.99<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref8\" name=\"_ftn8\">[8]<\/a> http:\/\/download.microsoft.com\/download\/1\/1\/9\/119CD765-0CEE-4DA6-B396-20603D3F4701\/Datacenter_Sustainability_Strategy_Brief.pdf<\/p>\n<p>Featured image:\u00a0https:\/\/mspoweruser.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2015\/07\/rsz_microsoft-data-center.jpg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Microsoft is on a fervent path to reduce carbon emissions from its datacenter business. Is it completely altruistic or just good business sense?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2273,"featured_media":9874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[50,1521,1520,185],"class_list":["post-9873","hck-submission","type-hck-submission","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cloud-computing","category-datacenter","category-microsoft","category-renewable-energy"],"connected_submission_link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/assignment\/climate-change-challenge-2016\/","yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Pushing Microsoft\u2019s cloud business to carbon neutral and beyond - Technology and Operations Management<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/pushing-microsofts-cloud-business-to-carbon-neutral-and-beyond\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pushing Microsoft\u2019s cloud business to carbon neutral and beyond - Technology and Operations Management\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Microsoft is on a fervent path to reduce carbon emissions from its datacenter business. 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