Been asking my techie friends this question for while now and am normally met by quizzical looks and lots of ‘umms’ and ‘arrs’, but little in the way of argued answers … Here’s the question: is Software as a Service inherently more eco-friendly than premise-based software? Or put another way, am I doing the planet a favour by using Gmail over Outlook?

I am currently agnostic on this one. There are lots of claims being made in the SaaS and hosting space that software running on multi-tenanted servers is inherently better for our collective futures on this rock than running multiple single-server installations. That seems reasonable. But what about the case of hosted software, such as Google Apps, that is largely meant to replace client-only software (e.g. Microsoft Office)? Is this greener? Maybe not. In this case we are actually adding a server into the mix, rather than taking one away. And the environmental costs of running massive server farms are huge. The Economist commented recently that ‘the largest data centres now rival aluminium smelters in the energy they consume’, noting that Microsoft’s new facility in Chicago requires three electrical substations with a capacity of 198 megawatts! Offset that if you will …

So, am I damning the polar bears every time I use Google Docs, or not?