Harnessing digital modernization for the U.S. military’s computing future.
Pathways to Lower-carbon Computing
The U.S. military has historically and necessarily been focused on the threat posed by human adversaries. However, climate change may be a more immediate and insistent threat.
Climate change represents a destabilizing force — through extreme weather patterns, water stress and scarcity, food insecurity, rising sea levels and mass population migrations — with profound implications on geopolitical dynamics and global security.
The U.S. military has the resources, the opportunity and the will to take meaningful climate action, while concurrently reducing climate-induced threats to global stability and security, by starting with its own resource consumption and “boot-print.”
Available data suggests global Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) activities are responsible for 4% of global electricity consumption and 1.4% of global carbon emissions. As an organization that operates one of the world’s largest ICT infrastructures, the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DoD) digital boot-print has meaningful environmental consequences. However, technology also can represent part of the solution as we consider pathways toward a lower-carbon future.
While the primary motivation of our DoD customers is, and unequivocally will remain, mission performance, Jacobs is partnering with DoD to reduce the energy consumed by its vast, enabling ICT infrastructure. Through digital modernization — modernizing both the underlying enterprise information technology infrastructure and optimizing how that infrastructure is used — Jacobs is leading our DoD partners toward a lower-carbon future while also enhancing mission capability.
An infrastructure makeover
Modernizing DoD’s infrastructure means moving from its traditional on-premise computing models to the cloud.
While the performance and cost efficiencies of the cloud are well-established, the cloud also delivers environmental benefits. We’re helping DoD take advantage of:
- Operating efficiencies. Through a combination of facility, power and technology engineering, today’s cloud data centers have become hyper-efficient in delivering computing power relative to energy consumed.
- Alternative energy sources. By moving to centralized cloud computing models, DoD gains the ability to co-locate and tie its computing infrastructure to sources of renewable and redundant energy.
- Capacity flexibility. By exploiting the flexibility and scalability of cloud models to reduce the unused capacity “overhead,” DoD enterprise computing demand can be satisfied with a smaller infrastructure and energy footprint.
Maximizing performance
Modernizing the infrastructure is only one part of the equation. Perhaps more important is maximizing the potential of those newly modernized systems by optimizing 1) the data moving through the infrastructure, and 2) how services are delivered to the user. Optimizing data and service models can enhance performance, maximize system efficiency and further reduce computing and corresponding energy requirements.
- Data management. We’re helping our DoD customers use the computational and analytic power of its newly modernized cloud and edge-enabled infrastructures to rearchitect and better manage data, dramatically reducing security vulnerabilities and the computational energy required to collect, move, store, analyze and process that data.
- Service optimization. By bringing together our domain experience with the right enabling digital technologies, we’re developing and delivering services to DoD users that optimize both the capability of their modernized infrastructure and the mission and operational outcomes that rely on it.
Building sustainable, reliable data center solutions
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As a significant consumer of energy resources and a material contributor to humanity’s carbon impact, DoD recognizes the global threat posed by climate change and our modernization work is accelerating DoD’s ability to reduce and mitigate the climate impact of its digital operations. ■