For this reason it is important for companies to upgrade their carbon command centres to provide the company with relevant business intelligence. That means being able to predict (as is now done) the energy conservation opportunities deep through the supply base and driving through high-impact energy reduction, waste elimination, and cost reduction programmes. It means knowing how the business and the data centre systems should respond when type X circuit boards cannot be obtained on account of supply chain fractures and compounds and chemicals unavailability.

When data centres operations are shifted across regions and mapped onto dirty power it is worth noting that the carbon footprint of the data centre services can go through the roof. Being able to manage and circumvent cloud-induced greenhouse gas amplification is a great opportunity to establish green service superiority in challenging environments.

Like most technologies, the performance of the cloud will depend on how we use it. IF cloud providers readlly do run their sites more efficiently than in-house datacenters, and IF cloud services displace in-house datacenters that would have been built otherwise, then the cloud could deliver significant energy savings in the IT sector.

On the other hand, if cloud providers don’t out-perform in-house datacenters on energy efficiency specifically, we won’t save energy, even if cloud beats in-house facilities in other ways (eg, agility, TCO). Also, if cloud just adds more IT services to the world without actually displacing in-house datacenters, we wont save energy, even if the extra IT services are beneficial to our lives and the economy.

So, the greeness of cloud is a potential but not a given. It’s entirely dependent on how choose to run it and what we choose to do with it.