Biomathematics & Statistics Scotland
BioSS staff, students and visitors are provided with excellent computing facilities designed to meet their needs, including a choice of desktop platforms for personal use and ready access to shared resources such as multi-core servers and multi-processor clusters.
BioSS’s scientific achievements are made possible by the provision of modern IT facilities appropriate to the needs of individual users and keeping pace with current IT advancements. One such development has been the provision of access to Web 2.0 facilities (web applications which facilitate interactive information sharing and collaboration) such as Wikis, which has facilitated our ability to collaborate remotely. More generally, BioSS IT staff are increasingly working alongside colleagues in consultancy, research and training and helping raise revenue by developing web tools to show case the work of BioSS scientists.
BioSS is increasingly taking advantage of virtualisation - where software on a host provides a simulated computing environment or ‘virtual machine’s for guest software - for example, we are running Windows desktops within Linux environments. Beyond obvious savings in time and cost by allowing multiple virtual machines to run on a single physical server, this technology greatly reduces the demand for electrical power.
BioSS is measuring its IT energy consumption where possible and setting measurable targets for reduction. We are focussing on reducing print-related energy and paper consumption and providing audio and video conferencing facilities to enable staff to make time and money savings. Staff are increasingly replacing face-toface meetings with conference calls using portable video-phones and software such as EVO.
