Michael Geist’s article on Clean Cloud Computing provides a pretty decent introduction to the concept, as well as highlights a few interesting ideas about zero-carbon data centers. Of course, Mr Geist has his concerns about privacy and all with good reasons. Cloud computing has a lot of potential benefits to offer, but if there is a shift in liability to the company or persons operating a cloud, then there will be a very slow or little interest on behalf of corporations. Also, handing over your data to a third party fuzzes the lines about what they can do with your data.
Canada (and all other countries for that matter) needs a service provider that can enable generic, multi-purpose cloud computing who can also ensure the integrity and safety of their data and privacy.