It’s no secret that the cloud is a key focus area for us at Microsoft. We appreciate what the cloud allows our customers to do, the exciting new possibilities it allows us to explore, and the unique benefits it presents. It’s also a key part of our vision for helping our Microsoft Dynamics customers become dynamic businesses.
As we talk with customers and partners about the cloud, it quickly becomes clear that different people approach cloud thinking about different benefits. For some, it is the transition to a “pay as you go” model, moving compute infrastructure from capital expense to operating expense. For others, it is the elastic compute capacity of the cloud. For still others, it can be the new scenarios that the cloud enables through analytics on massive aggregates of data which was previously isolated behind individual firewalls. The list goes on, and obviously many come to the cloud seeking combinations of these benefits. In the Microsoft Dynamics group, we are focused on bringing our solutions to Microsoft’s public and our partners and customers private clouds, with features designed to unleash all of these benefits.
It’s an outstanding day when we can uncover a new benefit from these cloud initiatives, and the new report, “Cloud Computing and Sustainability: The Environmental Benefits of Moving to the Cloud ” makes today one of those days. This new study, first of its kind in the software industry, found that for large deployments of business applications software, Microsoft’s cloud solutions, including Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, can reduce energy use and carbon emissions by more than 30 percent when compared to their corresponding business applications installed on-premises. The benefits are even more impressive for small deployments: Emissions can be reduced by more than 90 percent!
The reasons behind this lower carbon footprint have mainly to do with efficiencies specific to Microsoft datacenters, ranging from physical aspects like where they are built, what power sources they use and how they are set up, to the technical aspects of how the servers are utilized, and how fluctuations in demand, especially across a vast number of users, are managed. Microsoft’s top to bottom investment in cloud innovation, from partnering on server design, to datacenter design, and of course, to cloud software platforms and applications, combined with our investment in global cloud capacity, deliver a powerful customer benefit: when you transition your IT needs to Microsoft, the overall energy usage decreases and therefore, your impact on the environment is reduced. So if you are assessing the pros and cons of whether Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is right for your business, you can add “running a greener company” to the benefits column. Take a look at the report; take a look at our Windows Azure cloud platform, and take a look at Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online – they’re worth it, and they’re good for the environment.
Mike Ehrenberg
Technical Fellow | Microsoft Dynamics