Green Software for the Green Internet

About a year ago, I posted a note concerning the power consumption of the Internet and the need for a Green Internet. This note triggered some email exchanges and today I did attend a conference organized by some government organizations and BITCOM discussing the resource efficiency of information and communication technology.

While the energy consumption of data centers is usually associated with the energy usage of IT hardware (mainly server systems) and cooling systems, I found it interesting that some people reported a major impact of the software on the energy consumption. Of course, we all know that software has increased its “weight” constantly over the last years because time to market is more important in many cases than designs for efficiency and scalability. But as we move towards Green Software, we might have to rethink the way we do software development and get back to the proper design of truly efficient and scalable solutions.