Case study: Betfair goes green

Betfair improved the energy efficiency of its IT after concerns over the supply of sufficient electricity to support the rapid growth of its data centre.

The online gaming firm receives more than four billion page impressions per week on its web site, and reaches more than 22,000 transactions per second during a big horse race.

But the power required to support such high-performance systems placed a heavy demand on energy, says Betfair service quality director John Hegarty.

“We’ve gone down the energy efficiency route very much because we had to,” he says.

“We found that in our data centres we were pushing the boundary of how much power we could take. We were under pressure on rack space and so we started with a very pragmatic view that focused on business benefit.”

The company operates 60 Solaris-based databases, which previously ran on individual servers spread across 40 equipment racks. Using virtualisation technology, this was reduced to 16 racks ­ leading to an 84 per cent power saving.

Similarly, storage virtualisation reduced disk space from 60Tb to 20Tb, cutting energy use by 60 per cent.

And a move from Intel processors to AMD Opteron chips in 70 front-end web servers cut their power use by 50 per cent.

“It was easy for us to start to save through energy efficiency and it came straight through to our bottom line,” says Hegarty.

“I would encourage anyone, even if they’re not considering green IT, to really look at the savings you could make from getting your operations greener.”

But the development of a green IT strategy did not stop at the data centre. Betfair is working to make environmental concerns a fundamental part of its everyday operations.

Staff are encouraged to recycle paper, to print less, and to use both sides of the paper when printing is necessary. To remind employees, signs next to every printer say: ‘Paper doesn’t grow on trees. Please recycle.’

“We have a newly established internal committee that focuses on our green programme and the environment in general and it’s over subscribed,” says Hegarty. “Our staff are fighting to get onto it and they’re really keen to help make a difference.”

Other initiatives include installing smart technology to automatically turn off equipment that is not being used, and donating used PCs to charity Computer Aid International to be re-used in developing countries.

Green issues also form part of IT purchasing decisions.

“We’re looking to implement a green supplier process where we focus on working with suppliers who have strong green programmes,” says Hegarty.

“Later this year we will be putting out a number of supplier awards and one of those awards will be Betfair’s Green Supplier of the Year.”

The key to success is creating a culture of continuous improvement, says Hegarty.

“We make savings so we’re getting a real business benefit. We find that a focus on these issues really brings our staff together as one team. It builds commitment and it really supports our culture of innovation,” he says.

“We started off pragmatically going into cost saving through energy efficiency, and we’re coming out the other side with a very strong green programme.”