It should come as no surprise that companies can save money by powering down PCs when they're not in use. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), managing PC power consumption can cut total energy costs by up to 15 percent—or as much as $7,000 annually for a company with 100 PCs or $70,000 annually for a company with 1,000 PCs.
To help companies manage their PCs' power consumption, New Boundary Technologies offers its Green IT Solution. Using New Boundary's Policy Commander (an automated policy management product) and PwrSmart technology, the Green IT Solution not only implements power-management policies, but also automatically monitors and enforces them.
Making users responsible for powering down their PCs or having the IT staff configure power-management settings on hundreds or thousands of computers can be ineffective, according to Terry Boevers, the communications manager at New Boundary Technologies. "Putting the onus on the end user is pretty much a hit or miss proposition," said Boevers. "And research shows that when IT sets computers’ power-management settings, users often disable them within a few months. Our solution automatically keeps power-management settings at their approved configurations, even when users try to disable or change them."
The Green IT Solution works on Windows 2000 and later. The power-management policies appear as selectable power schemes in the Windows interface. Using drag-and-drop functionality, systems administrators can group computers and enforce the selected power-management policy on one or more computer groups. Alternatively, they can enforce the selected power-management policy on one or more computers. After the policy is implemented, the Green IT Solution automatically monitors and enforces the policy. "Once you set it, you can forget it," said Boevers.
For more information about the Green IT Solution, go to the Green IT Solution web page.
