Is Cloud Computing Really Green?
Tuesday, April 20th, 2010
Those who make their livings making predictions and coming up with cute names are calling 2010 “The Year of the Cloud.” To my mind that phrase brings up an image of Yoda in Dinotopia, but it’s really referring to the shift from hardware-based data storage to data storage in “the cloud,” i.e., online. The advent of Google docs and any number of other online storage systems means that companies can now store their information in The Cloud, rather than maintaining costly server centers on site. For the small- to medium-sized business (SMB), the switch to The Cloud offers an unprecedented opportunity to customize software usage and data storage. As we’ve explained in previous posts, if The Cloud allows companies to use pay-as-you-go models for software (usually referred to as SaaS, or Software as a Service), and to store information online, it could indeed be Green, since businesses would need far fewer IT resources on-site.




















