Internet Statistics by Alex Goldman

Doug Washburn of Forrester Research brought together two opposing viewpoints concerning the best way to reduce energy consumption in a large enterprise and the result was an interesting session with constant back and forth arguments that remained polite and on topic.

Sumir Karayi, CEO of 1E, runs a company that makes software that will turn off your PCs when they’re not in use. He says it’s easy to implement and delivers rapid ROI, always within 12 months and sometimes even within 6 months.

Jeff McNaught, chief marketing and strategy officer for Wyse, says he co-invented the thin client. His company helps organizations remove PCs from the office, replacing them with terminals accessing a cloud computing suite. The system takes longer to implement but can deliver larger savings.

1E

“Eleven years ago, we saved a Swiss bank $100 per PC per year by helping them switch off PCs when not in use. Doing this saves money and it also saves the life of the PC. Over the past 10 years, we have saved our clients approximately $500 million,” said Karayi.

An audience member asked whether turning off the PC can harm it, and Karayi said that although that used to be true (more of old CRTs than old PCs) it is certainly no longer true.

Karayi said that Dell deployed 1E’s software and also used Dell’s own PC monitoring system to check whether 1E’s reported savings were real.

“Michael Dell had asked people to turn off their PCs, but we were still able to save about $36 per PC per year, and Dell was able to confirm that the savings our software reported was accurate.”

Karayi said that some of his competitors promise higher savings by assuming that every PC in a company is always on for every day of the year, whereas his company only promises actual savings.

Wyse

“We replace PCs with thin clients, which are architected to use less energy,” said McNaught.

He said that a PC can use 220 watts of energy, about $220 per year, but a thin client averages 6.7 watts. After adding in the cost of the data center, savings are worth $70 to $150 per year.

“Power savings alone pay for the price of the terminal over two or three years.”

The technology is rapidly improving. “Years ago, the power saved by replacing a PC with a terminal was consumed by the server. Now, servers are more efficient. Energy consumption is about 20 watts to 30 watts per user. And once you’re using a data center, you can use devices anywhere. Data centers are never off. People can even use an iPad.”

Discussion

“A Dell PC, especially if it’s a laptop, and half of enterprise PCs are laptops, will use signficantly less than $220 worth of energy per year,” said Karayi. Often, if you actually measure it, it’s less than $100, as long as we’re talking actual usage, not maximum rated wattage. SpeedStep is now built into most operating systems.”

Karayi said the convenience between a PC and a terminal is also similar. “You can urn on a PC over the network, using wake on LAN, for patching.”

Servers, he added, use more energy. “A server uses 70 percent of total power at idle, versus 100 percent at full. You cannot save more than 30 percent in the data center. The thesis that energy is saved in the data center is one we struggle with.”

Karayi added that there’s a strong green argument for keeping old PCs and finding new uses for them. “The environmental cost of throwing away hardware is very high. There’s a good argument for keeping your old kit.”

Washburn said that few people turn off their PC, only about 15 percent in a recent survey, because they want it to turn on quickly in the morning. Karayi said that 1E can turn on the PC when a card reader is swiped at the door entry, in response to an instruction from an iPhone app, or from a web interface accessed before the commute to work.

McNaught said that thin clients turn on in 10 seconds. He added that a dynamic data center can adjust server loads according to demand, going from 10 servers during the day to one server at night.

“A ‘zero client’ is more like a TV. It turns on and off quickly. Wyse and Citrix co-invented the thin client in 1995. I’m the co-inventor. We can now get 300 users per server, up from 25 users per server years ago. The data center is shrinking. What happens to all those PCs on patch Tuesday every month? Thin clients are also safer. Companies struggle with PC management.”

Obstacles

“What are the objections you encounter when you sell your service,” asked Washburn.

“The biggest obstacle is the perception of IT itself,” said Karayi.

“We conducted a survey and one-third of users reported they got ‘little or no value’ from IT. That’s obviously not true. IT’s biggest concern is that it not prevent users from doing the work they need to do. We can deliver power savings and also benefits such as eliminating that moment when the user powers on the PC after patch Tuesday and the first message they see asks them to reboot their PC.”

McNaught said that many employees feel slighted when their PC is replaced by something cheaper. “The user experience was inferior when thin clients first arrived. 15 years later, we can do CAD/CAM and other high end applications and also deliver unified communications, but it’s important to avoid a cultural backlash [when making a big change].”

“Successful changes use a pilot program,” McNaught said. “They deploy thin clients over a period of three to five years and they keep them for eight to ten years. The big savings come when they skip a PC refresh cycle. For example, Amerisure employees were opposed to the change until they realized that their thin clients did crash. There were immediate savings, but when the next PC refresh cycle came around, Amerisure was ready to spend $3 million and did not have to spend a penny of it. They diverted those resources to other productive areas.”

“There is a huge cultural challenge,” McNaught admitted. “There’s a fear of change. Many companies don’t have a long term strategy to replace the PC. Nobody was every fired for buying another PC.”

“Talk to your number one stakeholder, the user,” Karayi advised. “One software company produced a video showing the savings and why they were doing this. A professional video costs $5,000 to $10,000, but is very valuable. Get senior management involved.”

Tags: green, pc

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