But is it enough of a differentiator to make purchasers choose services using solely renewable power sources? This is really the question that businesses supplying “green” services need to ask themselves. Beyond the fact that I believe that “green” is rapidly becoming a marketing buzzword, you have to ask yourself, what, if anything, extra that you are willing to pay for certifiably green IT resources.
What’s got me back on this kick was the announcement this week by Greenqloud, an Icelandic start-up that is promising to deliver cloud services that use only renewable energy sources and to locate their datacenters in Iceland where geothermal power and natural cooling are both relatively easy to implement. (I’ll refrain from commentng on the overly cutesy name)
I’ve still haven’t seen any analysis that includes the potential volcanic eruption or earthquakes taking out your Icelandic connection, though I’ll give Greenqloud the benefit of the doubt that by the time they are in full swing they will have an answer to those questions as well.
So answer me this; when you consider a location for your colo servers, or as a location to host your applications, or even as where a cloud services provider hosts their applications, is the level of “green-ness” really a concern?
