Cloud tech can cut carbon emission by 30%: Microsoft

Businesses can save upto 30 per cent in power cost and carbon emission by moving to the internet based-cloud technology, a Microsoft study said on Wednesday.

"Businesses that choose to run business applications in the cloud can help reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions by a net 30 per cent or more versus running those same applications on their own infrastructure," Microsoft India director (server business) Pallavi Kathuria told PTI.

Cloud computing facilitates sharing of technological resources, software and digital information.

The emerging field functions on a pay-per-use model, helping technology companies to bring down their operation costs.

These savings are realised because large datacenters benefit from economies of scale and operational efficiencies, much more than what separate IT departments can achieve, she added.

The global study titled, 'Cloud Computing and Sustainability: The Environmental Benefits of Moving to the Cloud'

has been commissioned by Microsoft and conducted by Accenture and WSP Environment and Energy.

"The benefits can be even more significant for a small business moving to the cloud, where the savings can be more than 90 per cent," the study said.

Since many users 'share' an application running on a common cloud platform, the server utilisation goes up, resulting in lower energy cost and carbon footprint per user.

"We are seeing a healthy and ever-increasing momentum around cloud adoption by India businesses.

"Over 4,000 applications have been built for Windows Azure, Microsoft's cloud platform, from India alone," she said adding that there was a huge scope for companies to save costs by embracing the cloud.