SaaS has a future; just don't call it green

OpSource is hosting a very timely conference in San Francisco this week on software-as-a-service. What with the meltdown in the economy and continuing concern about the cost and environmental impact of energy use, there's interest in how cloud computing will impact the IT world.

And what better way to cut through the hype over the so-called green aspects of SaaS than to assemble veteran technologists who might share their experiences with the uninitiated? That's the usual format: People ready to impart knowledge to people eager to receive knowledge.

(Credit: CNET News)

Good idea but, well, maybe another day.

As I sat in a cavernous ballroom in San Francisco's Westin St. Francis Hotel scribbling down notes, it dawned on me that I was one of, literally, a handful of people listening to the lecturer. At most, there were 10 or 15 of us--a pity because as he faced a sea of mostly empty seats, Randy Bias, a technology strategist for GoGrid, a supplier of cloud computing infrastructure, offered up a convincing brief on the energy-saving advantages of virtualization and why it makes sense to offload server functions to the cloud.

He was followed on stage by Adrian Bowles, a director at Datamonitor, who was equally eloquent about why there are compelling business reasons to rip up the procedures of hardware provisioning that IT followed until the recession (some call it a depression) hit. "The old days of 'buy it, plug it in, and run it' are probably gone forever," Bowles said, proceeding to lay out a hard-headed case on behalf of going green.

By then, I counted eight people--eight--in the ballroom (not including the speaker). Most of the folks attending this two-day kaffeeklatsch couldn't be bothered with a topic that obviously bored them silly. No matter that green tech at its most basic is technology done with a low environmental impact. For some reason, a discussion of low-energy technologies, virtualization, and improved cooling techniques weren't enough to hook them.

As they used to say back in my Brooklyn neighborhood, whaddya gonna do? But truth be told, I was puzzled by all the no-shows. It wasn't as if the other sessions being held at the same time--"SaaS marketing in a downturn" and "Architecting and delivery for SaaS success"--were so much more thrilling.

Could it be that "green" remains too squishy a concept for most of these red-blooded show-me-the-money types? I buttonholed one attendee in a hallway, who agreed as he was munching down a free ice cream provided by the show's sponsors. But the proverbial man on the street interview doesn't suffice.

I heard it said at one of the sessions how IT compensation plans now hinge on how successful you are doing projects faster and doing them more inexpensively. That's why SaaS advocates believe their timing couldn't be any better. Maybe that's misplaced optimism; we'll see as the year progresses.

But this much is clear: telling the boss that you're saving the environment in the process is not likely to be the clincher. Ever.

[Voice_Of_Logic]

I will never, ever, trust my data in a SAAS environment.

[ASEI7]

In addition to the fact that cloud computing removes effective ownership of software and information from the people who used to own the computing machines, and makes people effectively permanent renters of their own work and hardware, digital serfs, it also has no environmental benefits.

Bits have to be crunched, and this carries an entropy cost, the energy value of which is defined by the general class of hardware. They have to be crunched somewhere, using someone?s energy. If it isn?t being expended by the customer, it will be expended in the server farm. The ?cloud? exists as physical hardware somewhere. Attempting to pretend otherwise is sloppy thinking.

In addition, information technology isn't that energy expensive in the grand scheme of things. My computer is ~800 watts. My car is in the tens-hundreds of kilowatts range. Saving a percentage here and there on things like lightbulbs and computing, at the end of the day only adds up to a tiny fraction of a percent of total energy expenditure.

[Markus2008]

@ Voice_Of_Logic
Your the same guy who said he would never trust his data in a "Computer" environment 25 years ago.

@ ASEI7
Energy savings of cloud computing is real through virtualization. I doubt you have ever sat through a lecture like the author was writing about.

@ Charles Cooper
I am at the OpSource event as well and skipped the energy sessions. Our group is figuring out how to grow as fast as possible and ride out the recession right now. Saving the world takes a back seat to saving myself and my employees.

[artofasultan]

I have a problem with people that don't under stand solar and wind power as our life saver for the whole world. why put the burden on our children and theres.

[Rname]

I see that OpSource dropped the admission fee by 60%. Was attendance bad for the whole conference or just this session?