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By Tim Ferguson, 20 April 2009 17:24

ATM operator and payment processing company VocaLink is using virtualisation to improve flexibility and reduce emissions and costs.

VocaLink runs the majority of the UK's ATM network as well as supporting the Bacs payment transfer system and Faster Payments Service.

The company started its virtualisation programme as part of a project to improve access to computing resources for its 400 UK staff and 150 overseas developers.

Nick Masterson-Jones, director of IT at VocaLink, told silicon.com the company decided to centralise its IT resources so the developers in India could access the UK datacentre directly.

"We have virtualised environments rather than the previous model which was if a development project needed a new server you started off with people sending in an order form for a server - it was literally weeks to get a server built and into action. With a virtualised environment we now look at 15, 20 minutes," he said.

"We had a very simple business case which was [to] improve the productivity," he added.

The company created a virtualised server farm within its datacentre to support the new approach using technology from Citrix, Microsoft and VMWare with server blades from HP.

The company managed to get a return on investment on the project within 12 months due to the efficiencies that were created.

"With virtualisation we have much better control over servers because there's no odd box sitting out on its own anymore. Because it's virtualisation you've got control, you've got visibility over it - everything's sitting on the estate," Masterson-Jones added.

Developers can now request processing power as and when they need it to test systems they've built. "What's rather nice is having flexibility. There's a lot more efficiency by having everybody working on thin clients remotely from the datacentre," he said.

Another benefit has been around security, according to VocaLink's IT director. "We wanted to improve security and the infrastructure we had meant that nothing ever left the datacentre at all. With a highly centralised model it meant that security was very tight."

As well as the development environment, VocaLink is also using virtualisation technology to support other business functions such as HR, finance and marketing.

Masterson-Jones said the main challenge around virtualisation has been managing demand for computing resources.

"Sometimes the technology is that good that you've got to make sure processes are kept up in line with it. You have to think ahead to make sure you don't get caught out," he said.

If the company hadn't pursued virtualisation it estimates that it would now be running around 600 physical servers. Currently, that total is around 300.

As a result the company estimates that it's saved around 3.3million kWh in power - equivalent to saving more than 4.5m tonnes of CO2 or planting 10,000 trees.

The technology isn't yet being used to support the production environments for the ATM network and payment processing platforms although it is being considered for the future.