World Wildlife Fund cuts emissions with videoconferencing

World Wildlife Fund practising what it preaches

The UK arm of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has rolled out a managed videoconferencing system to help reduce its carbon dioxide emissions.

The environmental wildlife charity is also trialling thin-client computing systems to further cut its IT power consumption.

David Southern, WWF UK head of IT, said: “We have to practice what we preach, and we need to ensure that our staff can work in a collaborative and effective way wherever they are.”

WWF UK’s business ADSL network was reaching capacity and had too much latency to deal with the demands of videoconferencing.

Videoconferencing needs sufficient bandwidth, low latency and quality of service (QoS) for users to experience a sufficiently real-time experience for the service to be useful and effective.

To achieve this, Southern chose telecoms provider Telstra International to implement a multi-protocol label switched network (MPLS).

MPLS can deliver a low-latency premium QoS service so that videoconferencing traffic is given priority over less time-sensitive data such as email.

The label switching in MPLS allows routers to map a direct path from one end point on the network to another. The routers check the traffic labels and not the data inside, before forwarding it to its destination.

Implementing MPLS for other latency-sensitive applications, such as IP telephony, rather than just for videoconferencing, makes rolling out an MPLS network easier to justify financially.

“Our rollout is composed of a Polycom high-definition videoconferencing system provided through a managed service from Telstra,” said Southern.

A key challenge of the videoconferencing rollout was to measure the reduced carbon footprint resulting from the initiative.

“We are installing videoconferencing integrated software that will automatically and accurately calculate the amount of carbon saved, amount of money saved and the number of people hours saved,” explained Southern.

WWF UK has an ongoing project, using 2004 as a starting point for its calculations, to reduce emissions by 25 per cent from all forms of travel.

Over this period, said Southern, “we have set ourselves the target of reducing air travel quotas of five per cent year on year. We are on course to achieve these targets.”

WWF’s UK arm has five sites: one each in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, its headquarters in Surrey and a hotdesking environment in London.

The MPLS network now has burst speeds up to 100Mbit/s, although the managed, guaranteed service from Telstra gives a dedicated 30Mbit/s connection to its headquarters in Surrey and 20Mbit/s at other sites.

WWF UK launched its One in Five challenge to its UK staff in July 2009, aiming to cut one in five flights they normally use to go to UK meetings. It has signed up nine companies and government departments and participants have to cut 20 per cent of their business flights within five years.

Members already signed up include BT, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Skanska, Capgemini, and Marks & Spencer.

Southern said that with the new network in place, WWF UK can also run its customer relationship management system and give robust access to its expenses and purchasing finance back-office systems, as well as its communication and collaboration tools.

Another benefit of the MPLS network is that WWF UK can now have integrated information management across its UK sites, further reducing the amount of hardware it used.

“Each regional office had its own data silos – separate contact and document databases,” said Southern. “So we slimmed down our IT footprint by consolidating those data silos into a single one, co-located at a Telstra facility in London. You can’t do that without a very reliable network,” explained Southern.

WWF UK is also trialling thin-client devices at its regional offices. “We’re looking at Sun’s SunRay devices and we’ll also be checking IGEL’s thin-client systems,” he said.

“The main factors we’re considering with regard to thin-client systems include compatibility with our existing in-house technologies, TCO and its strategic fit.”