How is Cloud Computing Considered to be Green I.T?

It centralizes storage and other operations for users, so it reduces the cost of running more servers at a single business or company in turn reducing energy costs.

About a year ago we started to virtualize a bunch of our servers. Right off the back we saw that the power draw of 4 powerful hosts was less than what used to be at least 30 physical servers. There is also the fact that we used to need backup servers for some of our important stuff so we had servers that just sat there powered down until something crashed and they needed to be booted up. Now our backup servers are in the virtual cloud and are taking up no extra space or recourses so I guess that green in the fact that it one less server physically built.

Im not one of those green freaks so I dont know to much about it. We just decided to move towards a virtual cloud using VMware because it seemed far easier to manage. The saving power was just a bonus for us.

Well the study was commissioned by Microsoft "imagine that".

It basically stated that Co2 emissions could be cut by 30% by switching to a Cloud based OS and using lightweight client machines to connect via the net.

Personally (my opinion) you could probably cut current emissions and energy consumption by 40-50% simply by switching to a mini low power consumption Green PC as opposed to standard desktop offerings for general computing and workstations.

Basically ( again my opinion) this is a paranoia tactic from Microsoft to gear people towards thinking that Cloud operating systems are a great idea. Get used to the whole cloud concept as it's going to be a huge point of legal debate over the next decade. Primarily due to intellectual property debates, personal liberties, and licensing,

If it happens (and it will) I'll go with Linux. :)