Sustainable digital infrastructure

Abstract

Modern society is built upon information and communications technologies that have permeated all aspects of our lives. Industries including e-commerce, healthcare, media, and finance are all dependent on network access to data and media services for their daily operations. Taken together, the hardware, software, and organizations that work together to provide network access, data storage, computation resources, and digital services constitute an information and communications infrastructure (ICI). As is the case with any true societal lifeline, ICI must be adaptable and available to changes and demands; and it must be energy-efficient and sustainable. It is this second requirement that will be the focus of my talk. In particular, I will begin by providing a broad definition of sustainability followed by a review of technology, system, and software solutions needed to achieve sustainable ICI.