Introduction

Earlier in this book there was a discussion about how the nature of information services has changed over the past few decades with the emergence of new ICTs, and their adaptation in different information services. Internet, web and mobile technologies have become major drivers behind the creation of a new era of digital information systems and services. These new technologies have significantly changed the ways in which we create, distribute, seek, access, use, share and recreate information.

The unprecedented growth in the volume and variety of digital information has significantly increased the demand for ICT and networking facilities, and the increasing use of ICT in the creation, management and use of information has significant economic and environmental implications. Individuals, institutions, governments, businesses, and so on, are making increasing use of ICT, which requires more economic resources for acquiring, managing and upgrading technologies because of the relatively short lifespan of computer and communications equipment. This makes the task of planning, managing and implementing projects that require substantial use of ICT more and more difficult. Increased use of ICT also makes more demands on energy consumption, which has adverse environmental impacts.

Globally ICTs contribute about 2% of current GHG emissions, and this figure will increase rapidly over coming years (Chapter 4; Climate Group, 2008). However, it was noted in Chapter 4 that the Climate Group has estimated that improved and appropriate use of ICT can reduce ‘annual man-made global emissions by 15% by 2020 and deliver energy efficiency savings to global businesses of over EUR 500 billion’ (Climate Group, 2008). This may be achieved by using green IT and cloud computing technologies that facilitate shared use of computing and networking resources, thereby avoiding wastage of computing resources and the corresponding energy consumption, while at the same time providing round the clock access to resources – content, hardware, software, networking, and so on – by using advanced technological facilities for scheduling and optimization, and instant scaling up or scaling down as and when required. This chapter discusses the basics of cloud computing technologies and shows how they can be used to build environment-friendly green information services. Design issues of a green information service are addressed in this chapter in the context of higher education and research as proposed by Chowdhury (2012a).