Business who deploy power management systems can cut their IT budgets by $17.32 per PC each year, according to
Gartner
.
It has calculated that an organization with 2,500 PCs can save $43,300 a year by actively managing IT power consumption. Another $6,500 savings can be made by turning off and unplugging machines.
Gartner principal analyst Federica Troni said that while much attention had been focused on power consumption in the data center, PC power consumption was also significant because of rising electricity prices.
"IT organizations should recognize that the greatest savings come from employing power management features," she said. "They should investigate the power management capabilities of their PC life cycle management tools and PC power management point solutions to implement these policies and to better support management activities."
Gartner says it has created a model to assess the impact of different variables on an organization's total PC power use.
The model is based on three different scenarios "” the well-managed, unmanaged and unplugged organization "” and assume 2,500 employees in an organization, a 1:1 ratio of PCs to employees and that employees work an eight-hour business day 230 days per year with the PC being used 70% of the working day. The power calculation assumes a cost of $0.1 for one kilowatt-hour (kWh).
The results of the assessment can be adjusted to reflect the power used and paid for by the organization and excluding that consumed by a laptop off-premises.
In the well-managed scenario, it is assumed that power management features are activated on all devices, and that desktops are not switched off or unplugged after hours.
In the unmanaged scenario, no attempt is made to manage or control the power management features, and users are left to decide whether to activate or deactivate the power management features.
In this scenario it is assumed that both desktop and notebook users activate power management features in 50% of the cases, 50% of desktops are switched off after hours and notebook devices are switched off or placed in suspend mode 50% of the time after hours, and of these, 50% are unplugged after hours.
Troni noted that unplugging machines brings further reductions in power but said such policies were impractical and likely to obstruct productivity because updates could not easily be performed after hours.