Invest in Our Planet: How Companies Can Leverage the AWS Cloud to Create a Sustainable Future

Your business is likely already reducing its carbon footprint by shifting to cloud-based video conferencing and collaboration tools instead of in-person meetings, which require employees to use transportation. By reducing the need to commute for work and events for your employees, you will be directly helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions related to climate change. While we have COVID to thank for many companies adopting these technologies at scale, these tools are having a great impact.

For those interested in an AWS option or replacement for your existing solution, let’s look at some of the AWS tools you can choose to conduct virtual meetings and events:

• Amazon Chime: A fully managed and secure content collaboration service where you can create, store, edit, and share content - and access it from anywhere. You can use Amazon WorkDocs to store and share documents securely in the cloud without worrying about harming the environment.
• AWS Elemental MediaLive: A visual workflow service that helps developers use AWS services to build distributed apps, automate processes, orchestrate microservices, and create data and machine learning (ML) pipelines. Apart from reduced energy consumption, scalability, and reduced hardware waste, AWS Step Functions will also help your business become more sustainable through optimized resource utilization.
• Amazon Connect: A cost-effective email service built on reliable and scalable infrastructure with which you can send transactional emails, marketing messages, or any other type of high-quality content to your customers. Use Amazon SES to enable efficient email delivery, reduce waste, and lower your company’s energy consumption.

Cloud service providers like AWS can help your business reduce its paper usage by enabling digital document management and collaboration. By reducing your paper-based processes and workflows, your company can sustainably contribute towards reducing the adverse environmental impact of paper production and disposal.

Here’s a list of AWS tools you can use to reduce your paper-based workflows:

• Amazon WorkDocs: A fully managed and secure content collaboration service where you can create, store, edit, and share content - and access it from anywhere. You can use Amazon WorkDocs to store and share documents securely in the cloud without worrying about harming the environment.
• AWS Step Functions: A visual workflow service that helps developers use AWS services to build distributed apps, automate processes, orchestrate microservices, and create data and machine learning (ML) pipelines. Apart from reduced energy consumption, scalability, and reduced hardware waste, AWS Step Functions will also help your business become more sustainable through optimized resource utilization.
• Amazon SES: A cost-effective email service built on reliable and scalable infrastructure with which you can send transactional emails, marketing messages, or any other type of high-quality content to your customers. Use Amazon SES to enable efficient email delivery, reduce waste, and lower your company’s energy consumption.

The AWS cloud is at the forefront of sustainable infrastructure in cloud computing. It’s committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2040 and has launched several green initiatives like sustainable infrastructure, energy-efficient data centers, and renewable energy sources to help businesses prioritize and contribute meaningfully toward a more sustainable future.

Below is a list of AWS tools that your company can use to promote a more sustainable infrastructure:

• AWS CloudFormation: A service that enables users to model and manage infrastructure resources in an automated and secure manner. AWS CloudFormation helps organizations reduce their carbon footprint by eliminating the need for physical hardware while creating and managing infrastructure on the AWS cloud.
• AWS Config: A fully managed service that lets users assess, audit, and evaluate the configuration of your resources. AWS Config provides sustainability benefits such as improving resource efficiency, enhancing compliance monitoring, and increasing transparency in terms of identifying potential areas for improvement and reducing their environmental impact.
• AWS CloudTrail: CloudTrail is a web service that enables auditing, security monitoring, and operational troubleshooting by tracking user activity and API usage. AWS CloudTrail helps reduce a company's carbon footprint by providing a complete record of events and API calls made within their AWS account.AWS CloudTrail will enable your company to identify areas where AWS resources are underutilized or overprovisioned, allowing you to optimize your resource usage and reduce energy consumption, ultimately reducing carbon emissions.

Your cloud services are powered by data centers that consume a significant amount of energy. By using cloud services from providers like AWS that prioritize renewable energy sources, your business can reduce its carbon footprint significantly and transition to a more sustainable energy future.

Here are some of the AWS tools that help your business become more conscientious about its energy consumption:

• AWS Trusted Advisor: An agent-less administration tool that guides you with the best ways to optimize your resource usage in AWS instances. It identifies ways to optimize your AWS infrastructure, improve security and performance, reduce costs, and monitor service quotas.By acting on these recommendations, you can reduce your company’s energy consumption, improve your sustainability practices, and ultimately reduce carbon emissions.
• AWS Auto Scaling: A tool that lets you build scaling plans that automate how groups of different resources respond to changes in demand. AWS Auto Scaling automatically adjusts the capacity of AWS resources to match your demand, eliminating the need for manual intervention. It ensures that AWS resources are only used when needed, reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions as a result.
• Amazon EC2 Spot Instances: An AWS EC2 Spot Instance is an unused EC2 instance that is available for l90 percent less cost than the on-demand price. Your organization can leverage this cost-effective capacity to optimize resource usage and reduce energy consumption, leading to significantly lower carbon emissions.

Your company can leverage many great AWS tools and services to reduce its energy consumption and carbon footprint. The AWS tools mentioned in this section will help you monitor and optimize your energy consumption of EC2 instances, automate tasks, reduce the need for dedicated computing resources, and reduce the need for physical storage devices.

So let’s look at two of the best AWS tools you can use to reduce your business’s energy consumption:

• AWS CloudWatch: A monitoring service for AWS resources and applications. You can use AWS Cloud Watch to collect and track real-time metrics. AWS CloudWatch will help reduce your company’s carbon footprint by enabling you to monitor your AWS resources’ performance in real-time, identify underutilized resources, and optimize resource usage.
• AWS Lambda: A serverless compute service that lets you run code in response to events and automatically manages the compute resources required by that code. This means you don’t need to provision, manage, or scale any servers to run your code which can lead to significant cost savings and environmental benefits. With AWS Lambda, your company can become more sustainable by reducing its energy consumption, scaling compute resources efficiently, reducing hardware waste, and supporting the use of renewable energy sources.

Your company can use cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and the Internet of Things (IoT) to optimize resource usage, reduce waste, and suppose sustainable business practices.

Here are just a few of the AWS tools you can use to accomplish a lot in terms of achieving your sustainability goals:

• AWS IoT Core: A managed cloud service that lets connected devices easily and securely interact with cloud applications and other devices. It can support unlimited devices and messages and can process and route those messages to AWS endpoints and other devices reliably and securely.Your business can significantly reduce its carbon footprint by leveraging AWS IoT Core to optimize your device usage by monitoring and controlling your devices’ energy usage remotely.
• AWS AppSync: A tool that allows your applications to access exactly the data they need. AWS AppSync helps you create a flexible API to securely access, manipulate, and combine data from multiple sources.With AWS AppSync, your organization can optimize its AWS resource usage by enabling real-time data synchronization, allowing apps to operate more efficiently, and reducing data transfers.
• Amazon Cognito: An identity management solution that lets you easily add user sign-up and authentication to your mobile and web apps. With AWS Cognito, there is no need for on-premises hardware. As a result, your organization can reduce its infrastructure requirements and costs to minimize energy consumption.

Sustainability is one of the most important issues of our time, and there are many regulations and self-imposed initiatives that companies must follow to meet their sustainability and compliance goals. Your organization can ensure they meet these requirements with the help of the AWS tools mentioned above. If you need an expert cloud service provider to help you leverage such AWS tools for a more sustainable future, NorthBay can help you get there.

NorthBay Solutions is a 100% AWS-focused cloud services provider, an AWS Premier Consulting Partner, and an AWS Managed Service Provider with over ten years of industry experience and expertise in helping organizations leverage, migrate to, and optimize within the AWS Cloud.