Environmental sustainability the new cloud computing battleground

Environmental sustainability has become a major new competitive battleground for cloud computing giants, Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS). All three companies are already committed to improved energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy within their international network of data centres even if those goals have not yet fully realised. However, that commitment is now being extended to new areas, including helping customers with their own sustainability objectives. This will open-up a whole new competitive battleground between these leading cloud companies. Between them, Google, Microsoft and AWS account for around two-thirds of all cloud-based digital workloads. These include everything from digital applications and services to databases and enterprise software. They support these workloads via massive, globally distributed, data centres. These centres offer computing processing capabilities, as well as data storage and a wide range of other services. However, demand for data centre resources are on the rise driven by the growing use of things such as high definition video, the Internet of Things (IoT), and big data. Therefore, AWS, Microsoft and Google are investing considerable resources in developing new data centres and expanding existing ones. As a result, all three are under mounting pressure to show that they take their environmental responsibilities seriously.