Architecture Big Bets 2008-2009 – Part 3 - Green Architecture
There are compelling reasons for designing systems in a way to minimise the use of recourses and the carbon footprint of each system or application. If you are not across the imperative to immediately address carbon emissions then I implore you to read The Weather Makers or Climate Wars. I did, and now I am scared.
Regardless of the ecological or survival reasons for green architectural design there are economic reasons that matter from an organisational perspective. If your organisation is not paying a tax for carbon expelled in powering its servers and applications then it soon will be. Also, your organisation is likely to have already committed to carbon reduction targets or a timeframe for achieving sustainable operation.
So, the next Architecture Big Bet is Green Architecture. There is much more to this than just virtualisation, and it takes thought and clever design to build applications that minimise power consumption, and therefore emissions. It is imperative that this occurs though, both ecologically and economically, so I would recommend that it enter your architecture principles.
For further details see my article in the upcoming issue of The Architecture Journal
.