Events

1E to save healthy PCs from early death

Businessgreen.com, Tuesday 13 October 2009

PC turn off software specialist 1E has revealed it is working on new technology designed to help firms significantly extend the life of corporate PCs, saving money and cutting levels of hazardous eWaste in the process.

Chief executive Sumir Karayi 1E said the firm was developing an updated version of its WakeUp power management technology that will automatically monitor the health of PCs and let IT managers know when they are likely to fail and need replacing. He added that the new software, which is scheduled for release midway through next year, will help address the environmental impacts caused by firms throwing out perfectly good computers.

"There is this mindset that business PCs only last three to four years, but why is that?" he asked. "There's an Intel/Microsoft mentality that you must upgrade every three years, but that has a huge environmental costs and isn't always necessary. Our new pro-active monitoring tool will tell you when the hard disk is degrading or the PC is about to give out, so you only upgrade when you need to."

Whether the technology can challenge an entrenched industry mentality that PCs are old after three years, regardless of how well they still work, remains to be seen. But Karayi is adamant that there is an appetite for extending machines lives, particularly when firms' IT budgets are under severe pressure as a result of the economic downturn.

He added that the new software would automatically undertake 100 different tests on the health of each machine and provide accurate real time reporting of any imminent problems. "The information is there in the back end of the PCs to almost invariably predict when they are going to break," he said, adding that for large companies with over 100,000 PCs extend the life cycle of a PC from three to five years can have a huge financial impact.

The revelation comes as 1E prepares this week to launch a new version of its flagship NightWatchman PC turn off software that has been developed for businesses servers.

Andy Hawkins, product manager for NightWatchman Server Edition, said that with many IT managers reluctant to turn off servers the new technology does not exactly mirror the PC edition and automatically switch off machines when they are not in use. However, it does monitor how much useful work a server is doing, measure its energy use, and report back to the IT manager. He explained that the data can then be used to identify those servers that can be safely switched off or represent good candidates for consolidation.

The software also features new functionality dubbed Drowsy Server that integrates with the power settings in a server and automatically reduces the amount of energy it is using when it is not undertaking useful work. Hawkins said that on average the functionality cuts server energy by 12 per cent and has the potential to save large firms over 20 per cent on their data centre energy bill by also cutting cooling requirements.

The launch of the new software was accompanied by the release of research commissioned by 1E, which shows that many firms are running servers that undertake no useful work.

The survey of data centre managers undertaken by Kelton Research found that almost three quarters of respondents believe around 15 per cent of their servers are unused. According to 1E, that equates to 4.7 million servers globally, wasting £2.5 billion a year in energy costs and generating 12 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.

Karayi said the results underlined the potential scale of the market for green IT solutions capable of identifying unused servers. "There are around five million unused servers, wasting £2.5 billion a year," he said. "The new software can identify and turn of those servers, and we can do it in the next three months, not the next three years.