Green News Blog

Green IT Embraced by Increasing Number of Online Companies

September 20, 2007 - When it comes to greening up business operations this day and age, the internet component of business is increasingly becoming fertile ground for implementing green-minded operations. Called "green IT", companies are beginning to see just how much energy can be saved by making more informed decisions in regards to their internet operations. One such business to do so is none other than the UK-based betting company, BetFair, whose online operations process up to 22,000 transactions per second during peak times, not to mention receiving up to 4 billion page impressions per week.

As reported by PC World, Betfair has recently embraced virtualization IT. By doing so, Betfair's online operations have made an 84% cut in energy usage, which considering how much traffic Betfair gets, is not only saving themselves loads of money, is also making a tremendous dent in global warming. To get an idea of how much virtualization IT helps to cut back energy usage, Betfair used to operated 40 server racks and require 60Tb of disk storage space. After implementing virtualization IT, they have cut their equipment racks down to 16 and now only require 20Tb of disk storage space for their web servers. The company also replaced several Intel processors in their web servers with AMD Opteron chips, which resulted in 50% less energy usage.

Betfair's Service Quality Director, John Hegarty, will be the first to admit that Betfair's initial intentions were not entirely altruistic. They were merely looking for better ways to use energy and save money. Now, however, Hegarty says the company's actions have sparked a green consciousness amongst employees and the company as a whole. An internal committe for Betfair's land-based operations have already begun implementing a paper recycling program by posting sings nearby printers that read "Paper does not grow on trees". The company is also encouraging its suppliers to green things up, and is planning to issue a "Green Supplier of the Year" award later in the year.

While virtualization IT is certainly making an impact in the hands of large web-based businesses, what does this mean for the smaller guys? Well, surprisingly, anyone who owns a website can make a difference. There are an increasing number of web hosting companies out there committed to only using renewable energy sources to power their servers. By choosing one of these environmentally friendly companies, website owners can help sustain a larger movement that is directly making an impact on Carbon Dioxide emissions and global warming.

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