austin's original green internet company
As Austin’s original “green” Internet operations company, OnRamp Access, LLC has been successfully evolving alongside the ever-changing Internet landscape, while maintaining its commitment to the environment since its inception in 1994. Operating as Austin’s original “green” Data Center, OnRamp was built on a simple idea: To provide all of the services necessary to conduct and manage business on the Internet in the areas of Colocation, Managed Servers, Disaster Recovery, Web/Application Development and Advanced Internet Solutions. Today, OnRamp is the only green Internet operations company in Central Texas.
"100% of OnRamp’s power comes from renewable energy such as wind power."
As a Data Center, housing thousands of servers, OnRamp has always made energy efficiency a top priority. Today, Data Centers account for between 1.2 to 2.0 percent of the electricity consumed in the United States. OnRamp’s energy costs are significant, ranking second in company expenses, behind employee salaries. In August of 2005, OnRamp became the first Internet Service Provider and Data Center in Texas powered by 100% green energy. As an Austin GreenChoice® Champion through Austin Energy, 100% of OnRamp’s power comes from renewable energy such as wind power. Yet, OnRamp’s commitment to energy efficiency goes beyond utilizing green power. Investing in new green technology, right-sizing the Data Center’s physical infrastructure and devices to the load and designing an energy-efficient system are all techniques OnRamp has employed to help reduce power consumption. The company recently completed improvements in the design and implementation of its cooling system, leading to a reduction in electricity and an increase in reliability. More efficient power equipment, including best-in-class uninterrupted power supply system (UPS), air handling and surge suppression units ensure that OnRamp’s Data Center consumes less energy. OnRamp’s hundreds of customers benefit from the company’s commitment to going green. As a result, OnRamp is able to keep costs for Colocation and Managed Server customers competitive. And, OnRamp finds that companies nationwide are more inclined to conduct business and align themselves with a “green” company like OnRamp as a way to demonstrate environmental and social responsibility. OnRamp’s multi-pronged approach in the areas of engineering, deployment, operations and organization has driven environmental sustainability not only within the company but also among the clients who trust OnRamp as their Internet operations company.
Today, many Data Centers and IT departments overlook energy costs in favor of excess hardware capacity. Moreover, the majority of Data Center facilities were not designed to accommodate the increase in energy consumption. As a result, implementing energy-efficient practices in Data Centers can have high upfront costs and many companies are not willing to make the investment, despite the long-term benefits. As Austin’s original green Data Center, OnRamp has made the commitment to being a green company on multiple levels. OnRamp’s multi-pronged approach in the areas of engineering, deployment, operations and organization make the company a leader in the technology industry. With power being the company’s number two expense, OnRamp made a significant investment in signing up as an Austin GreenChoice® Champion, yet the company knows it is important for the environment and will save money and resources in the long run. Many companies with similar energy consumption rates find migrating to green power too costly.
"OnRamp’s Data Center alternates hot-aisles and cold-aisles, thereby increasing the efficiency of the air conditioning system."
OnRamp has taken its commitment to energy efficiency several steps further. The configuration of racks in OnRamp’s Data Center alternates hot-aisles and cold-aisles, thereby increasing the efficiency of the air conditioning system. Most recently, OnRamp completed improvements in the design of its air handling infrastructure to allow for increased efficiency and improved air flow. In addition to air flow efficiency, OnRamp has made a commitment to using best-in-class power equipment including a double conversion uninterrupted power supply (UPS), multiple air handling units and surge suppression units. Designed to adapt to changes in technology or business environments while maintaining, or improving, availability and efficiency, this equipment architecture creates a dynamic critical infrastructure that supports IT agility and enables operational efficiencies. As a result, this best-of-class equipment lets OnRamp respond to rising energy costs with high-efficiency power and cooling solutions, remove barriers to new technology deployments imposed by power and cooling limitations, increase computing capacity without building a new facility, add redundancy to achieve higher levels of availability without disrupting operations and add power and cooling capacity without impacting system reliability.
OnRamp’s depth and breadth of capabilities at each layer of Internet operations enable the company to deliver a complete suite of services, eliminating the seams that exist between companies that only provide parts of the solution. As a result, OnRamp’s enterprise team has a unique set of capabilities that spans all aspects of Internet operations. Because of OnRamp’s experience in software/hardware configuration, the company is skilled at properly configuring servers and power-related software, thereby ensuring more efficient server operations.
"While the upfront costs are greater to move to blade architecture, the benefits include more efficient power utilization, cooling capabilities and components sharing."
The migration to blade servers, self-contained computer servers designed for high density, has given OnRamp an edge on its competitors. Whereas most Data Centers use standard rack-mounted servers with at least a power cord and network cable, blade servers have many components removed for space, power and other considerations while still having all of the functional components to be considered a computer. While the upfront costs are greater to move to blade architecture, the benefits include more efficient power utilization, cooling capabilities and components sharing. The newer generations of blade systems have improved substantially, to the point where a blade server generates less heat and is more efficient from a power-utilization standpoint than its counterpart rack server. In the immediate future, OnRamp will offer virtualization whereby one computer handles the functions of multiple machines at once, consolidating existing and future workloads, thus improving energy efficiency. This reduces the number of physical servers required, thereby reducing floor space, cooling and hardware costs.
OnRamp continues to look for new and improved ways to foster an environmentally friendly workplace. The company-wide recycling program makes it easy for employees to discard newspapers, bottles and cans. OnRamp owners collect and take the recycling to area centers.
