Green and ethical – why?

Our green, ethical approach to business is what guides us in how to meet the challenges in economy, technology and service. It is why we do things the way we do and why we keep on trying to do it better. It’s important to OpenSure to make a positive difference in every way that we can, going beyond simply offering a UK based green hosting service and ensuring we support it with wider sustainable and ethical business habits. This takes many forms but  open source software, beneficial working practices and renewably-powered data centre are good places to start. 

Our Environmental Policy PDF can be downloaded here.

Our ethos

OpenSure believes in fair, honest and transparent business dealings. We’re open and clear about the services that we provide and how much they will cost. There are no hidden charges, no freemium plans and no nasty surprises. We strive for an ethical approach in everything that we do and are always looking for the best result for our clients.

For our employees we offer a family-friendly and flexible working structure, while ensuring systems are pro-actively monitored every minute of every day. While we love to work with local businesses as much as we can, quality and customer service is always a top priority. We hope we have no prejudices when it comes to choosing our employees, business partners and suppliers.

How we support charity

OpenSure has supported locally based Megan Baker House, which provides FREE Conductive Education Services at its centre in Herefordshire for children, teenagers and adults with special educational needs and physical disabilities.

There are times when we help people and organizations where billing for time or assistance is not feasible or appropriate. At such times we request you pass on the good will and make a donation to any of the charities we support as a way of spreading a little more good cheer to people who need that extra help at times.

This is in addition to any direct contributions and support offered by ourselves or staff. It is also separate from our donation activity that helps supports the smaller projects that develop the software we all use.

Open source software

This is the biggy. Everything that OpenSure does runs on open source software. There’s a lot written about the whys and wherefores of open source on our blog, but essentially we believe it offers high quality, business-grade software with strong support and infinite compatibility and freedom.

Working practices

We have organised our working set-up to require as little travel as possible and actively encourage working from home. The vast majority of the services we use on a daily basis are accessed remotely, so we have no need for energy-hungry monsters of hardware in the office – a mobile, a netbook or a few PCs are enough for our local admin needs. We rarely print anything, we’re careful to switch off equipment when it’s not going to be needed.

Green hosting

We’re proud to use renewable energy for all our in-house systems. Our servers and our Tier 3 data centres conform to a variety of recognized standards eg VESPA fire protection, 2N redundancy on networks and N+1 on power systems, all cooled by passive air cooling and smart design.

In addition we have gone as far as we possibly can to use our racks efficiently so that we are responsible for as little energy-use as possible, while maintaining the quality of service our clients have come to expect.

We believe we offer a green hosting service second to none for both energy and service performance, and it’s testament to this that while some clients place green hosting as a priority, others value the level of service we’re able to offer regardless of how it’s run. We’ve never believed that using green and ethical services should be a hair shirt exercise.

If you would like further technical detail on energy use in the data centre please contact us.