Kin and Carta plc

09/03/2021 | News release | Archived content

Embracing cloud adoption in a sustainable way with Google Cloud

While we have several clients on Google Cloud and that are on the path to using Google Cloud to accelerate their sustainability goals, such as fleet optimisation and real-time inventory, a large proportion are still embracing the notion of using technology in a sustainable way. This remains the biggest challenge for organisations today, and the growth of multi-cloud use exacerbates this.

By its very nature, Google Cloud is a cloud for sustainability. It implies that the technology operates sustainably, but we are also applying the technology optimally. However, the journey does not end with a migration to Google Cloud, and we often find ourselves working with clients that do the following:

  • Have migrated to Google Cloud, but the infrastructure has not been designed or operating optimally, offsetting some of the sustainability benefits. Some of the net effects of this are latency and poor performance. What is often the answer? To throw more money and resources at the problem.
  • Have an application deployed on Google Cloud but are using legacy behaviour, technology or architectures, which negates some of the tenets of a cloud for sustainability. They also may have not chosen the correct migration strategy for that particular application, by 'cloud partners' who understand the infrastructure but not the fabric of applications. The industry-reported proportion of applications which have been rolled back from the cloud to on-premises remains staggeringly high and concerning.
  • Are using cloud storage or data warehousing, but have non-existent or very loose governance around data controls. This causes an explosion in data stored, often unnecessarily and with duplication, and exacerbates the challenges for organisations to drive insights for operational efficiency and, ironically, sustainability. For example, only 6% of all data ever created is in use today, with the other 94% sitting in a vast cyber landfill and creating a massive carbon footprint (source: HP Enterprise).

A compound effect of the above is a cloud solution that is not optimal nor sustainable and becomes operationally challenging and costly. Then add the complications of running workloads across various cloud providers.