Amazon pioneered the availability of commodity cloud computing resources
The opportunity
At the same time as IT services are moving to the cloud and businesses are increasingly virtualizing operations, data center energy use and emissions are coming under increased scrutiny. Pressure is mouting on cloud computing providers and customers alike to measure and manage server energy use, and those who succeed are finding significant value in PR and cost savings.
Cloud platforms offer nearly unlimited flexibility for distributed, virtualized, fluid system architectures
Challenges of the cloud
While the advantages of the cloud are clear, it does pose challenges for management and monitoring. When you don't control any of the hardware, traditional energy impact estimation techniques are next to useless, rendering system administrators incapable of knowing or reporting their applications' impact.
Application footprint, as imagined on EngineYard's cloud dashboard
The role of the platform
As keepers of utilization data, platform providers have the ability to deliver meaningful impact information to clients. By making this data visible, vendors empower their customers to make smarter decisions about resource allocation.
Our Tronprint Ruby library tracks software energy use data from within the applications themselves
Proving the concept
Tronprint makes applications aware of their own carbon footprints. Even when deployed as a swarm of application instances, the applications, enhanced by Tronprint, will collect and aggregate ongoing carbon emissions data at the application level. Platform providers can aggregate these data as appropriate and present reports to clients.