Green cloud computing: The need of the hour

Cloud Computing has ushered in a new era in shared IT infrastructure in which large pools of system are linked together via the internet to provide IT services. It is emerging as transformative trend in business and society. The growing demand of cloud infrastructure has drastically increased the energy consumption of data centers, which has become a critical issue. High energy consumption not only reduces the profit margin of cloud providers, but also leads to high carbon emission which is not only hazardarous to the environment but also aggravates global warming – a threat to existence of life on earth. Therefore, energy efficient solution is required to minimize the impact of cloud computing on the environment in the present scenario. This paper describes various elements of clouds which contribute to the total energy consumption and also solution for future research to enable green cloud computing. It also delves on the role of cloud users in achieving this goal.