Similarly, a study from Microsoft finds that online downloads of 10 million copies of Microsoft Office 2007, avoided eight times the amount of carbon emissions, or reduced the total tons of carbon emissions by 88 percent, compared to producing and shipping a DVD and its associated packaging through traditional retail distribution channels.

In Germany alone, Softwareload estimates, based on 2008 figures, that the annual carbon footprint created by traditional CD software production equals to 77,000m² of CDs and 6,132 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

“By downloading software packages, we cut out energy consumption involved in producing CDs, packaging and transporting them, as well as the fuel we use traveling to stores to buy them. Downloading personal and business software packages is a proven way to not only save the time and some of the expense involved in shopping for physical software packages, but we’ve also proven that it can help the environment too, which can only be a good thing,” said Dirk Lebzien, head of Softwareload, in the article.

While the intent of much of the global economy is with high aspirations towards a better environment, there are some fast and efficient ways to improve your carbon footprint with the use of smart inventory software for inventory management and a greener supply chain. The key to cooperative parties is to educate and bring on board as many of the company's business participants as possible, whether or not they have made a fully fledged commitment to go-green.

The first step to effective reduction of the carbon footprint is to accurately assess where the company stands now. Take careful stock of paper, water and energy costs and build a strategy to cut consumption at every level. Each step forward, no matter how small, sets the company on the pathway to an eco-friendly module that will soon be emulated by others. Perhaps the most influential retailer to take the helm and inspire others was Wal-Mart. The corporate giant set forth a campaign that required all their suppliers to show a report on each company's recycling and reduction of carbon emission efforts, made verifiable by Wal-Mart. Since the plan went into action, Wal-Mart suppliers have shown a valiant effort in lowering their energy consumption and seeking the aid of technology for comprehensive greenhouse solutions.

A few weeks back there was a NY Times article on South Korea's concept of the Ubiquitous City, where an area called New Songdo would arguably become the most networked place in the world.  Following the crash of the Asian markets a few years back, Seoul made a concerted effort to move from an industrial economy to that of one based on IT.  In this vein, they've created the concept for the Ubiquitous City.  For example, recycling bins could use RFID to credit you with recycling a glass bottle, if you need a birth certificate you could get one printed from a city government kiosk on the sidewalk, there's even talk of pressure sensitive floors to detect a fall in an elderly persons home...  Naturally, storing and processing all this data would be ideally suited for the Cloud and it seems that Korean government feels the same.

To develop their Cloud infrastructure, the government just announced that they will be devoting $172 million dollars over the next year to help the private sector promote, develop and deploy Cloud based systems.   While that might not be considered a lot of money in some circles (especially when it comes to government funding) the fact that the Seoul is putting any money towards this nascent industry is a sign of forward thinking and can only bode well for SaaS vendors worldwide.  Kudos to South Korea for putting its money where its mouth is...

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There have been a lot of these types of articles circling around the web on various blogs etc., this article is informative and eye opening, it left me thinking.....

Here are some highlights:

SaaS Application Power Consumption:

GreenBiz.com reports that companies using outsourced data centers can save thousands of dollars per year in energy costs, as well as make significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, according to a recent study.

Based on the energy savings earned by customers of NetSuite, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company based in San Mateo, Calif., companies can save an average of $10,000 a year by outsourcing their computing needs to highly efficient and optimized third parties.

A study conducted by Greenspace, an Illinois-based vendor of green building supplies, found that NetSuite customers who signed up for the company's Enterprise Resource Planning and Customer Relationship Management software services saved a combined $61 million in energy bills per year. The energy savings, equaling almost 595 million kilowatt-hours, led to avoided greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 423,000 metric tons of CO2.