Fair argument?

But is that a fair argument? Is the assumption that Cloud computing is inherently Greener correct? So then, some quarters have begun to question that logic, arguing there isn't enough evidence to suggest Cloud is as sustainable as vendors would have you believe.

University of Melbourne professor and Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society director, Rod Tucker - who has conducted technology into the energy efficiency of different Cloud computing tasks and compared them against local, desktop computing processes - says the rationale underlying the Cloud's Greenness is dubious as it neglects the consumption of energy required in transferring data from end-users to vendors' data centres.

The amount of data is in effect tiny

"If you're doing something like checking your email where the amount of data is in effect tiny, the conventional wisdom of Cloud computing being very Green and energy efficient is valid," he says. "Nevertheless we've considered a number of cases where it isn't necessarily Green."

Tucker as well attributes the un-Greenness of the Cloud to the technological layers of the internet, where routers are increasingly eating up more power and energy is consumed every step of the process.

Lot of processing that goes on in those routers

"There's quite a lot of processing that goes on in those routers and they're major big boxes in the core of the internet and those consume a fair amount of energy as then; less than the access network however the amount of energy being consumed by the routers is growing," he says.