Betfair gaming group saving energy, money, and the environment

With more than four billion page views per week, the popular Betfair site needed to find a way to use less energy. For one thing, their data centers were running out of room, and for another, it didn’t make sense to have such high power bills with alternatives available.

These alternatives came in the form of introducing virtualization technologies and replacing Intel chips with AMD Opteron chips. “It was easy for us to start to save through energy efficiency and it came straight through to our bottom line,” says Betfair service quality director John Hegarty. Betfair has seen energy reductions of 50-84% with these measures, and they’re not stopping there.

Signs next to every printer remind employees to print less, use both sides to print when they must, and to always recycle. Used PCs are donated to charity Computer Aid International, smart technology has been implemented to turn off machines when they’re not in use, and even purchasing decisions are swayed by environmental issues.

“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.”