Clean Cloud, Green Product: optimize your carbon footprint today
In our connected world, sustainability has become a critical concern.
As we rely more and more on technology, the “everything is software” approach comes with a hidden cost: the environmental impact of our digital activities.
The Tech ecosystem where “everything is software” has some responsibility : we have to reduce our carbon footprint for our customers.
Let’s go deeper into the concept of digital carbon footprint and cloud carbon footprint.
Digital Carbon Footprint
From a Product Management perspective, the amount of data your product generates and transfers can significantly impact your customers’ digital carbon footprints.
Every year, something between 3ZB to 40 ZB of data is transferred and transported online.
How to optimize your Digital Carbon Footprint?
- Optimize images and videos for the web 👉 reduce file size
- Compress everything 👉 enable gzip/brotli
- Leverage web caching 👉 configure http headers
- Reduce data usage 👉 minimize http requests
- Improve latency with CDNs 👉 store your content in geographically distributed servers using Content Delivery Network tools
Cloud Carbon Footprint
Many organizations are now cloud first companies and use cloud solutions to host and operate their products.
Although data centers represent a relatively minor part of carbon emissions in digital activities, they can become a significant weight on the carbon footprint of companies.
How to optimize your Cloud Carbon Footprint?
- Choose the right data centers location 👉 with the Google Cloud region picker)
- Match the appropriate cloud service model 👉 based on your needs between IaaS, CaaS, PaaS, FaaS (more in my article in french here)
- Rightsize your resources 👉 remove any unused or underutilized resources
- Batch workloads strategically 👉 you may schedule batch workloads for times when there is lower carbon intensity
- Adopt and implement FinOps principles 👉 optimize cloud costs and minimize energy consumption. (more info in my presentation here)
- Train your team 👉 I recommend the LFC131 — Green Software for Practitioners
Conclusion
Whether it’s digital assets, cloud storage or computing power, optimization are essential.
By taking these first steps, we can collectively reduce the environmental impact to build a more sustainable tech future with eco-friendly products.
Learn more about green software practices with the Green Software Foundation and validate the LFC131 — Green Software for Practitioners exam.
