Microsoft's Cloud business is experiencing explosive growth, and the Capacity, Supply Chain & Provisioning (CSCP) organization is responsible for enabling the infrastructure and industry-leading supply chain underlying this growth. As Microsoft scales to become the global leader in cloud deployments and services, they are embedding sustainability across the product lifecycle by deeply understanding the environmental impact of their supply chain and cloud hardware underpinning cloud growth.

Cloud hardware, in particular silicon-based devices and servers have been found to contain some of the most embodied carbon intense parts, pieces, and components of any manufactured product. Microsoft CSCP has provided a selection of Cloud hardware for students to engage in teardown analysis. The project requests evaluation of general feasibility, cost, and size/scope of the project estimated for scale. The project will further enable analysis of materials composition, embedded material vs functional value recovery, cost vs value tradeoff, commodity parts vs customizable parts, and is expected to help Microsoft guide Cloud hardware design for sustainability.