I have always been fascinated with mathematics, especially Geometric progressions and Probability distributions. While I was studying Econometrics and working on my Ph.D. thesis in Economics, most of what I was thinking about was Probability distributions and complex systems. More recently, I wrote a paper on Power Law systems, taking the example of the Icelandic Kronur exchange rate.

The problem with complex systems and systems that follow the geometric progression, or Power Law type distribution, is that they are hard to understand; they do not behave nicely enough for us to predict the pattern of the trajectory of the variables under study or the impact those variables have on other variables with dependencies. Benoit Mandelbrot, applied those mathematical properties to pricing decision on financial markets and found that they followed the same trajectory and with the same result that one cannot predict where in the path of the variable one is. What, you ask, has this got to do with Compute Cloud Infrastructure? If one notes the pattern of data consumption, processing, network usage and mobile phone penetration, they all seem to follow a geometric progression (i.e. they are growing at exponential rates). This is disturbing because the energy sources that power the server infrastructure are predominantly non-renewable, “dirty energy” sources like coal, gas, and to a lesser degree, nuclear sources. While the data industry tries to figure out how to move away from these traditional sources of energy, we are faced with a more complex challenge. Namely, the linear growth of the adoption of renewable sources of energy (i.e Supply of Sustainable Power) and the exponential growth of our demand for electricity. The big computing infrastructure providers such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Rackspace, are at the center of this crisis.

I think we need to change, radically, the way we look at Computing infrastructure. That is exactly what we are doing at GreenQloud. We believe that powering infrastructure with sustainable energy sources is necessary to meet the growing, exponential demand for Cloud-based data services. Our mission is to provide world-class cloud computing infrastructure that is easy-to-use, competitively priced and powered exclusively by renewable energy to reduce the carbon emissions generated by the increase in data demand.

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