Precious metals and chemical manufacturer Johnson
Matthey is embarking onserver consolidationandIT sustainabilityinitiatives to cut
costs, raise the company's environmental leadership profile, and
prepare for future environmental legislation.
"Consolidation and sustainability go hand in hand because we can
reduce our carbon footprint by streamlining production systems,"
said Stephen Way, IT director for Johnson Matthey's precious metal
products division.
The programme will focus on intelligent power management and
server consolidation through
virtualisation at the company's datacentres in London and
Royston.
"We expect to realise £120 a year in power savings for each
server that is replaced through virtualisation, which would realise
a saving of about £600 a year in a branch office, and that does not
include other savings, such as reduced
cooling costs," said Way.
Johnson Matthey, which is a member of carbon reduction forums,
has yet to quantify the savings it will achieve through
virtualisation at its larger Royston datacentre.
"Virtualisation has the added benefit of greater flexibility and
improved server management and disaster recovery because it enables
the company to switch server operations easily to a remote location
if necessary," said Way.
Johnson Matthey is also looking at reducing its carbon footprint
by eliminating all its paper-based processes.
Way said in the past there had been some "traditional
resistance" moving away from paper audit trails for financial
transactions, but at just one business in the group, savings of
50,000 pages a year had been achieved by switching to electronic
documents.