Environment

We have been making a comprehensive transformation of the way in which we run the company, the way we communicate and the way we work together. We are eliminating as much travel and unnecessary energy consumption as possible, adopting flexible working practices.

Technology

These measures are backed up by the right technology for remote access. As a software engineering firm we face increasing demand for IT technology for services to personnel and customers. Prior to virtualisation the effect was a need for more and more servers, but it was becoming difficult to find space in the datacentre; Worse still, each new server added to the firm’s electricity bill. In 2005, we ran a virtualization pilot. The plan was to reduce provisioning time to hours instead of weeks by running multiple servers on single machines. We chose Parallel’s OpenVz and Sun’s (now Oracle) VirtualBox server virtualization technology, eventually reducing our hardware server count by 60 percent and reducing our energy requirements by a corresponding amount. Over 2 years, the Information Systems Services team at Ingeneering removed 12 servers from the datacentre. Paul Ingram says:

“Their workloads were taken up by the virtualized solution where 16 servers ran on four physical machines. Because of virtualization, we expect to save thousands of pounds in our electricity bills a year, which in turn will go a long way to lowering our carbon footprint.”

Advances in server technology have enabled us to reduce our server count still further whilst reducing electricity consumption per server and increasing the number of virtualised services.

Travel

Reduced travel is making the company a more sustainable business, whilst improved work life balance is driving up employee satisfaction. As an early adopter of flexible working, Jacqui Caren, Principal Engineer at Ingeneering, is in no doubt about the benefits. “I now mostly work from home,” she says. “I’m not only saving money on commuting, but also I can work during the time I used to spend travelling. So everyone wins.”

We have followed the Government’s Green Transport Plan and entered the Cycle to Work Scheme, using cycling where possible to reduce car travel, increase health and as a by product employee satisfaction and productivity.