Is the 'green cloud' all hype?

According to latest Hype Cycle report, computer experts doubt the 'greenness' of cloud computing. But the Green IT sector maybe on the verge of maturity.

Thu, Oct 01 2009 at 7:12 PM EST

Photo: Oceano Mare

Cloud computing is officially the “most hyped” technology on the planet right now according the latest Hype Cycle, a report by Gartner that watches industry blogs and press communications on various emerging technologies.

A big part of that hype has centered about the greenness of cloud computing, and how much a decentralized network of on-demand servers can save on energy.

According to the report only about 21% of IT managers believe that cloud computing is greener than standard server farms. 35% are undecided and the rest don’t buy it.

But after studying hundreds of technologies for more than a decade, Gartner has developed an enlightening projection of where these technologies might go.

After the Hype peak, they loose their buzz enter the “trough of disillusionment” and gradually emerge (if they don’t’ get stuck there) towards the “plateau of productivity.”

Though the hype around green IT is deflating, that may spell a quick maturation process fueled larger by the big boys – Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google. As the MIT Technology Review puts it:

Cloud computing may raise privacy and security concerns, but this growing practice -- offloading computation and storage to remote data centers run by companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo -- could have one clear advantage: far better energy efficiency, thanks to custom data centers now rising across the country.

Only time will tell whether Green IT, and in particular cloud computing, hits its stride in a couple of years or a decade, but it is fairly certain that with a big push for energy efficiency in the IT sector, it will be here to stay.

via: Green Computing