A few weeks ago we noted that this cycle of Cloud Computing aka Grid aka…..(etc) was probably going to be kindly put to bed after a host of high profile woes, and wondered what it:

will be resurrected as next time. Our money is on a biological analogy.

El Reg has stepped up to the breach and noted that there will of course be a Grab for Green (props to RedCatCo for link):

The next time around, it will be pitched as a “green” technology. Why ruin the environment with your data center? You can run a social media website and still love the earth.

Energy-efficient computers powered by sunshine. This will be an instant hit. There will be greenhouse gas output dashboards with neat little Ajax widgets. You’ll have calculators to figure out how much to pay for carbon offsets each month. Don’t believe me? Follow the money. “Green” technology is the most efficient, modern way to capitalize on liberal guilt. You also get to pass it off as altruism. Combine that with a web development community that runs on self-satisfaction and you’ve got a recipe for profit. Best of all, you can squeeze money out of an investor for this by making him feel ashamed to be a person of means.

What started as a noble cause has finally finished its devolution into a racket.

No matter what the name, you, the developer, will still be dealing reliability and accountability. Using someone else’s infrastructure for your application will forever be a business risk, but it sounds so much less so with a cuddly name. Your CTO will fall for the next cycle pretty easily. The compunction he feels for his latest data center build-out will outweigh the downsides of an external dependency.

Al Gore even said so.

Dang, we should have seen that one coming. Patrick’s Law* makes this the most likely correct scenario. It’s not true of course - massively concentrated datacentres are as ungreen as you can get, but it is definitely a wonderful straw to clutch on to.

*Patrick’s Law states that, for most human endeavours where greed, fear or power is involved, the most cynical explanation is usually the correct one

(Update - any worries I had that I was overly skeptical about the head-in-the clouds set is dispelled by the comments over here on Crunchbase)