SaaS for a Greener IT

Reuters reviewed a new report from Symantec that covers Green initiatives in IT. Regarding SaaS impacts:

"Iglesias said that the high numbers about SaaS -- 57 percent considered cloud computing a green practice -- were surprising to some extent, depending on the motivations for cloud computing. "Are they looking at it as a way to offload their power consumption from me to you, or do they see it as the right thing to do from an industry standpoint, going to people who specialize on a capability?" Iglesias asked."

With giving ownership of energy used for the application and data storage to the SaaS supplier, for anything to be truly "green" or closer to carbon neutral (at least once in operations), would be getting the energy needed from a renewable energy source such as solar or wind. Web hosting providers have been doing this for awhile, as shown by SolarEnergyHost, AISO.net, SolarHost, and dozens of others. As competition increases for cloud computing and similar applications, this surely will be another feature implemented with suppliers looking to differentiate themselves, try to become a better fit into IT's need for increased green solutions.