Cloud Computing as a Strategy

The potential business benefits of Green IT along the lines of energy saving pressures should make ICT managers look at ways of increasing the efficiency of their operations. In the short term, while these issues need to be addressed, they will remain highly complex. This dilemma should accelerate the move towards the energy-efficiency value proposition of the cloud computing model that presents itself as one of the viable options to reduce much of the risk associated with a datacenter's inefficiency, especially for non-core applications such as Web applications. With regard to the future legislative landscape, it is extremely important that ICT managers begin planning and implementing a methodology to better understand their own carbon footprint and efficiency today to ensure that operations are ready once legislation is approved by the EU and enforced by the member states.

However, Greenpeace observes that the cloud phenomenon may aggravate the overall climate change situation because the collective demand for more computing resources will increase dramatically in the next few years. Even the most efficiently built datacenter with the highest utilization rates will only mitigate, rather than eliminate, harmful CO2 emissions until regulatory measures are taken by governments to incite the generation and use of renewable energy sources in cloud computing infrastructures.

Refer my upcoming two posts to explore more on the above and to read in more detail about 

Cloud Computing as a Green IT Strategy

and 

Cloud Computing as an IT Efficiency Strategy