Cineworld goes green with virtualisation

UK cinema chain Cineworld has relaunched its website, saving money and reducing power consumption in the process.

The company has been working with hosting company Carrenza, which is running the new website on virtualised servers.

The new website includes the facility for customers to buy cinema vouchers and play trailers, as well as the standard film time and content information.

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But as the website is hosted on Carrenza's virtualised utility computing service, Cineworld has managed to cut energy use by around 60 per cent.

As the website is hosted on virtualised servers, fewer physical ones are needed, meaning less power is required to support it.

Speaking to silicon.com Cineworld's head of IT, Vincent McGann, said the decision to revamp the website was taken around 12 months ago and the company has been working with Carrenza since May this year. The site was relaunched about two weeks ago.

McGann said: "From our perspective, the other benefits are that the management and the responsibility for the equipment remains with the hosting company. They are responsible for the servers."

He added that virtualisation hadn't originally been part of the plan but when the company spoke to Carrenza it made sense.

The new website can cope with up to 500,000 users per day and the use of virtualised servers means the capacity of the site can be scaled up easily and quickly if needed.

This could be important when there are special promotions or blockbuster openings that see a surge in ticket orders.

The virtualised server approach also means the total cost of ownership for Cineworld has decreased as it doesn't need to own the hardware as previously was the case.

McGann added that online ordering is crucial in terms of revenue so the website needs to be reliable. He said the cinema chain also plans to make further use of the website.

"Where there are things that we can utilise through the website, we absolutely want to do that," McGann said.