BigFix aims to trim energy costs with new software

Management software maker BigFix today unveiled an upgrade to its enterprise platform aimed at helping network managers cut power costs by letting them shut down client machines after-hours.

BigFix Power Management is designed to track power consumption on Microsoft Windows client machines and comes bundled with the vendor’s Enterprise Suite. The full platform also includes software distribution, endpoint security, configuration management and patch deployment capabilities.

"IT administrators get a vast number of machines configured for performance and not for conservation. End users will typically maximize the settings for their own convenience," says Greg Toto, vice president of BigFix product management. "When the day is done, those machines should be reverted back to a conservation configuration and in many cases they are not."

Industry data shows there’s money to be saved by switching off machines. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the average PC wastes up to 400 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, and that can cost up to $50 per PC, depending on energy prices. Separately, the Environmental Protection Agency reports that computers and monitors in the United States are responsible for the unnecessary production of millions of tons of greenhouse gases every year, and more than $1 billion per year is wasted on electricity for computer monitors that are turned on when they shouldn’t be.

While many PCs contain power conservation settings, users typically override them. According to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, some 80% of PC users disable their individual power conservation setting within 90 days.

Richard D'Amours, senior network analyst at Edmonton Public Schools in Canada’s Alberta province, wants to reclaim some of those lost dollars. "There is a fixed cost associated with utilities in our budget, and when you talk about spending money on PCs not being used, you are talking about money leaving the district," says D'Amours, who is responsible for 22,000 desktops across 240 sites with 80,000 users.

In the past, D'Amours would have to request all schools leave their PCs on overnight or on a weekend when his staff wanted to tackle updates and maintenance. "With the number of schools we have it's not really efficient to tell one school to shut down and another to leave them on based on our maintenance work," he explains.

Now, with the Power Management module, D'Amours says he can wake up desktops and laptops that have been shut down for upgrades, remotely shut down client machines, and enforce configuration policies that would reset the machines’ settings to conservation mode when not in use.

D'Amours hasn't had the Power Management add-on in production long enough to quantify cost savings, but BigFix says the software can help customers cut electric power costs by between $10 and $50 per device, per year.

Power Management also supports D'Amours’ goals to be a more green organization. "We’d also like to cut down on greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, and this offers reports to show you how if you change PC settings it affects power and other factors," D'Amours says.