One of my clients, an IT director, asked me a very interesting question this week: "Can cloud computing be called a green initiative?" My instant answer was: "It could." Not a straight answer, but enough for us to get into a conversation of whether cloud computing was a green IT enabler.

Cloud computing is certainly a hot topic at the moment. Oracle’s recent purchase of Sun points to the fact that more major players in the IT industry are focusing on providing business applications. Salesforce, which is one of the largest in the cloud computing space for business applications, will soon find itself with more competitors.

Back to the point: Is cloud computing a green IT enabler? With new data centers that are more efficient with regards to energy usage, that leverage virtual infrastructures, and which are hosted in green-certified buildings, the answer would be “yes.” Also, with the workplace going thin client and leveraging virtual PCs, and organizations instituting work-from-home policies resulting in less use of office space—add another yes.

However, service-level agreements, security and legal requirements still pose a challenge to big enterprises when starting the conversation around cloud computing and about hosting their systems on an external-vendor’s infrastructure. You may not want to host your e-mail system externally and you’re not considering hosting your office communicator service outside your organization’s infrastructure—fair enough. But consider this: Can you at least make your infrastructure as efficient as the vendors are to support cloud computing?

If nothing else, cloud computing is teaching everyone how poorly data centers, workplace infrastructures and critical systems are being managed. It may not be a fair comparison, but if we look at how some companies like IBM, Microsoft and Google run their servers and data centers, applications and workplace, we would say: “Gosh, we have a lot of room to save here!” Cloud computing can play this role in helping you sort out your own cloud.

Yes, yours—the cloud can be the one hosted on your infrastructure. More efficient, greener and saving costs. Take a look at the new data centers; leverage the virtual infrastructure and the virtual workplace. I am down in South America next week, and it is fantastic how well my Office Communicator reaches the people I need, and transfers my calls. It’s my own, virtual cloud—everywhere and on the Accenture infrastructure.

There is still a lot to happen in this space: common standards, new service offerings, legal restrictions, etc. And one thing in IT is true: just because something is very cool, it does not mean we will use it.

Take a look on cloud computing, and look at it differently. It may look dark at first, but with a closer look, it can become greener.

By André Guerreiro, US Workplace Technology & Collaboration