Has anybody asked why?
Has anybody taken the time to ask why data centers are outgrowing their limitations? The direct answer is "more servers, and increase in power demand". But has anybody stopped to ask why that additional power is needed (or, indeed, if it really is needed)? I'm not saying anything either way, but it might be a good idea to take a step back and look to see why data centers need to be filled with such capacity.
I have no doubt that if the software vendors (especially Microsoft) have their way, data centers will need much more power in the future. Software as a service (or "software on demand" or whatever it's called this week) takes the users' apps and runs them on servers in the data center. Effectively, that's taking (part of) the power required on the user's computer and transferring it to the data center. The end result is that the data center will consume more power. Remote computing is, of course, the logical end-game of SaaS. Thin clients for everyone, all connected to huge data centers. Of course, when something happens to the data center, imagine how many people will be effected. And imagine the power and bandwidth required by the data center. These issues may very well be a good reason to keep your computer and ignore the SaaS idea entirely. It's not altogether a bad idea in theory. But in practice, on a large scale, it seems like a disaster waiting to happen. And you thought California had power crunches now...