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1E update NightWatchman to v6

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1E have released a significant update to NightWatchman, their computer energy saving software.

I have written about 1E and their NightWatchman energy saving software several times previously but because of the update, I thought them worth another post.

First a bit of background – NightWatchman is an application which allows system administrators managing computers to also manage and reduce their energy use. It does this by powering down computers remotely and automatically overnight and at weekends, thereby reducing their energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Ford has already announced that it is saving over $1 million per annum having rolled out NightWatchman.

So, what have they added to the application in version 6?

  1. well, they have added a web-based, configurable, enterprise dashboard to give a high level view of power use and energy savings across an organisation
  2. they also added location-based energy tariffs specific to geography and utility to make for more accurate reporting
  3. they beefed up the sleepless client detection to shut down safely machines which are resisting being shut down
  4. they added multi-lingual support (French and German for now, with Spanish in the works) and
  5. they have a native Mac client allowing control of computers, be they Windows or Mac based, from within a single console

1E have a stellar client list, a very simple proposition (we’ll help you manage turning off & on your computers to help save energy) and they have just significantly improved the product – what’s not to like?

And before I forget, the other news that 1E are announcing is their latest client, the insurance group Aviva, is rolling out NightWatchman across their 30,000 UK-based PCs – nice win for 1E!

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Friday Morning Green Numbers round-up 03/26/2010

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Green numbers

Photo credit Unhindered by Talent

Here is this Friday’s Green Numbers round-up:

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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NightWatchman saving energy

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Night Watchman

Photo credit officer2975

Following on from my earlier post about the importance of turning things off, we had a briefing the other day from a company called 1E.

1E entered the power management space about 10 years ago when they wrote NightWatchman. NightWatchman is a PC power management application which aims to reduce the energy wasted by computers not being turned off at the end of the working day.

They were well ahead of the market (remember, they started 10 years ago, long before there was any power management built into the operating system) and, in fact, they had a hard time selling NightWatchman until about three years ago.

NightWatchman is now deployed on 4 million PCs worldwide savingcustomers US $360 million in energy costs and preventing 3 million tons of CO2 emissions, according to 1E.

As an interesting aside, the name NightWatchman came from the fact that the software was originally written for a company who had a security guard going around at night turning off computers and monitors! In fact, in the first seven years it was sold as a security and patching tool (it would allow companies to shut off computers in the evening and schedule a window in the middle of the night during which the computers would power up to download any security updates and patches which had been released).

In their whitepaper, entitled ?Why Power Schemes are not Enough?? [PDF] 1E make a great point –

It is impossible to monitor and report on the energy used by your PC estate (and therefore the cost and CO2 emissions this causes) using only the built-in tools that come with Windows. Because of the lack of built-in monitoring of energy usage, organizations are unaware of the lack of effectiveness of Windows sleep timers.

Windows power schemes should therefore not be used as the mechanism for reliable overnight and weekend energy saving for PCs.

Dell rolled out NightWatchman and wrote a white paper on the experience [pdf] – from the case study:

1E NightWatchman software saves files and closes applications and shuts down or places into sleep mode computers in the Microsoft Windows environment while preventing data loss and application errors. It also allows computers to be turned off from a central location, at a specified time, while providing extensive reports for management.

NightWatchman works with SMSWakeUp, which repowers computers in synchronization with Microsoft SMS. Administrators can boot computers from a centralized command so they can deploy security patches or new applications during off-hours.

By deploying 1E?s NightWatchman and SMSWakeUp applications to its 50,000 client computers, Dell expects to realize up to a 40 percent reduction in computer-related energy costs, which could translate into US$1.8 million in savings annually.

AT&T also installed 1E and from the release on AT&T’s rollout [PDF] it said:

[AT&T] is launching the NightWatchman? PC power management solution from 1E on 310,000 desktop computers across its domestic operations to help improve energy efficiency. Powering down corporate PCs during non-work hours is expected to save AT&T more than 135 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year and eliminate 123,941 tons of carbon dioxide emissions ? equivalent to the electricity required to power 14,892 homes.

1E also have a server version of their NightWatchman software – this program identifies under-utilised servers, allowing them to be either re-deployed or decommissioned – fewer servers means less energy consumed by server sprawl. NightWatchman Server also has an energy management component built-in which has the added benefit of reducing heat from servers and therefore the air conditioning load in data centers required to cool the servers.

All of this means less energy costs and fewer CO2 emissions for companies. Go 1E!