Date: 2008-02-05 Category: News

Cardiff IT company to offer carbon-neutral hosting service

Cardiff based eLINIA, one of the UK’s fastest growing managed service providers, is to offer a carbon-neutral hosting service thanks to an agreement with Equinix’s environmentally friendly data centre in Slough.

Power for the data centre is supplied by Slough Heat and Power Energy Centre, a converted coal-fire power station, which generates hot water and electricity for local businesses by burning wood chips and fibre cubes made from used paper and cardboard.

eLINIA is one of the first four companies to take space at the new data centre to accommodate its growing managed services customer base, which includes clients such as The National Assembly for Wales and Global Aerospace.

"Failure to curb emissions will soon be as damaging to a company’s reputation as losing their personal information is today," said James Carnie, technical architect of eLINIA.

"Managed hosting is all about giving customers peace of mind, and we see our environmental policy as an extension of that. That’s why it was so important to opt for a service that is technically sound and sustainable for our customers in the long-term."

eLINIA is offering carbon-neutral hosting for existing customers at its Cardiff data centre through a carbon offsetting initiative implemented through CO2 Balance. The company has also switched to E:ON’s ’EasyGreen’ tariff to ensure its internal energy supply is 100 renewable.

With recent research suggesting 94 of businesses plan to add carbon friendly clauses in contract negotiations with suppliers, eLINIA’s carbon-neutral service comes at a time when companies are beginning to look seriously at their emissions policies, particularly at a supplier level.

Sharon Pfleger-Taylor, Operations Manager at CCI Solutions, an eLINIA customer hosted at the Equinix data centre, said "Environmentally friendly suppliers are becoming incredibly valuable as they can take away a lot of the hassle when reducing a company’s overall carbon emissions. eLINIA’s carbon-neutral hosting service means we can reduce the carbon footprint of our business in a cost-effective way, without disrupting our existing processes."

James Carnie commented, "We doubled in size last year alone and anticipate similar levels of growth this year. We plan to increase our presence in the Equinix datacentre to meet this growth and will increase our capacity to help our customers reduce their carbon emissions."