Controlling the energy consumption of resilient cloud services – GreenAct

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the digital transition of our economy has been forced to progress in order to ensure activities continuity while respecting health measures. In particular, companies and other organisations are looking to online cloud services to outsource their processes: from communication to human resources management, through inventories. However, without the emergence of a sovereign cloud, this transition can lead to a critical loss of control over sensitive data.

Interestingly, with the German company T-Systems, OVHcloud, a global cloud hosting provider located in Roubaix, is launching a major European cloud initiative, which should empower companies to rely on digital technology, without losing sovereignty. However, given the scale of this digital transition, we can expect a significant rebound effect, which can impose several challenges to our territory’s cloud operators. In particular, the GreenAct project focuses on issues relating to i) the resilience of cloud infrastructures and ii) energy consumption resulting from digital usages.

On the energy front, OVHcloud is known for its server liquid cooling solutions—applied for many years in production—that enable it to significantly reduce its energy footprint. Nevertheless, the best energy management at the data center level cannot replace responsible ressource usage from online service providers and end users, which requires them to be aware of the energy consumption of their cloud services.

GreenAct, with the involvement of a major regional player, like OVHcloud, aims to develop innovative software solutions that enable all stakeholders in the cloud value chain to evaluate their energy consumption usage, using clear and easily-interpretable indicators. With these new metrics, GreenAct then wants to establish a resource contract between cloud hosting providers and service providers, so they can collaborate to control their energy consumption, for their shared benefit. The final step of the project will balance the resilience requirements of cloud-hosted services and their energy consumption, by offering the cloud operator new resilience management strategies, subject to energy consumption constraints.

By highlighting the energy consumption of the cloud, creating a strategy for ecological collaboration between digital players, and finally carefully controlling the impact of the resilience of sovereign cloud online services, GreenAct aims to move forward on major and pressing scientific challenges, while also offering a rapid technological transfer to civil society.