Guidance, which company officials say helps online retailers improve online shopping experiences, announced today that it’s started to offer green hosting for eCommerce Web sites.

 

The company claims that the move will not require any upgrades or additional investment on the client’s part.

 

It’s a new standard practice for Guidance – the latest in a series of changes undertaken over the past year to help the company achieve its goal of operating as an environmentally aware, carbon-neutral company, officials say.

 

Guidance says that to reduce overall energy use, it’s now using energy-efficient servers and processors to host its clients’ Web sites: Guidance also is moving to more virtualization in the company’s development environment to reduce internal energy consumption.

 

Guidance says it’s offset all of its remaining electricity-related CO2 emissions from its servers by purchasing renewable energy credits through BeGreen Business, the carbon offset brand of Green Mountain Energy.

 

The credits are made from wind and biomass sources located throughout the United States, helping avoid an average of more than 52,500 pounds of CO2 emissions annually, according to the company. This has the equivalent environmental benefit of not driving a car roughly 58,500 miles, or of recycling almost 130,000 aluminum cans and more than 21,000 pounds of newspaper, company officials say.

 

“We’re giving online retailers an easy way to embrace green hosting,” said Jon Provisor, Guidance’s co-owner and chief technical officer. “We’ve been working for more than a year now to make our business operate in a more sustainable, environmentally responsible way. We’re especially excited about this achievement, because it’s something we can offer our clients – making sustainability a shared effort.”

 

Guidance since 1993 has helped companies seize opportunities and solve problems through the innovative and practical use of technology, company officials say.