Survey Identifies Desktop Workstations as a Power Drain

Enterprises with 10,000 desktop workstations waste $1.26 million in energy costs annually

ST. HELIER, Jersey, United Kingdom--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A recent survey of hundreds of professionals reveals work station drainage poses a prevalent power consumption dilemma. Through the daily use of workstations consuming power for hours on end, desktops devour millions of dollars worth of energy. In addition, survey respondents report that 69% of them use more than one workstation and 24% stated that they keep their stations powered on 100% of the time. As a result, businesses supporting 10,000 workstations waste more than $1.26 million in energy costs each year.

“This strongly indicates automated power management solutions provide the greatest return on investment by leveraging the cumulative power reduction achieved on enterprise-wide client workstation deployments.”

According to the survey, desktops are kept on during 43% of total non-work hours, including evenings and weekends, meaning desktops are operating yet unused for more than 55 hours a week. This equates to an unnecessary, additional annual electricity cost of more than $73 per desktop, which already consumes nearly $150 each year. Systems management and automation software solutions, like Kaseya’s user state management, are able to proactively force system shutdowns when desktops are inactive, and intelligent chip sets, such as the Intel® vPRO™, can also force system startups remotely. In addition, these solutions can be leveraged to regulate power consumption during operational hours.

“Even small reductions in power usage for workstations can result in significant savings across the enterprise,” said Gerald Blackie, CEO of Kaseya. “In this time of economic calamity, it is essential for businesses to identify ways to be cost effective and efficient. Consolidating and powering down workstations are simple solutions that can have a great impact very quickly.”

To maximize energy savings, the EPA recommends setting computers to enter system standby after 30 to 60 minutes and monitors to enter sleep mode after five to 20 minutes. In addition, reducing the number of workstations for each employee would not only decrease power costs, but hardware costs, application costs and maintenance costs as well. Converting to laptop use could also be beneficial, as the average annual cost for laptop power consumption is only around $23, which is 16% of the energy cost of a desktop. Deploying docking stations for laptops would eliminate redundant desktops.

"The primary research revealed that automated power management was among the least costly to deploy and easiest to implement, yet provided some of the largest overall reductions in power costs," noted Steve Brasen, IT industry analyst for Enterprise Management Associates (EMA). "This strongly indicates automated power management solutions provide the greatest return on investment by leveraging the cumulative power reduction achieved on enterprise-wide client workstation deployments."

The Web-based survey was developed by analysts at EMA and sponsored by Kaseya, a global provider of information technology (IT) automation software for IT solution providers and public and private sector IT organizations.

Kaseya enables companies of any size to take a proactive approach to improved operations and customer satisfaction, dramatically increasing productivity and profitability through Kaseya’s flexible and comprehensive IT automation solution. Kaseya helps customers remotely monitor, maintain, update, secure and back-up any server and workstation within their network from a single, Web-based management console. Kaseya’s integrated platform is complete, powerful and easy to deploy and administer.

For more information, or to download a copy of The True Value of Green IT – An EMA Research Report, please visit www.kaseya.com.

About Kaseya

Kaseya is a global provider of IT automation software for IT Solution Providers and Public and Private Sector IT organizations. Kaseya’s IT Automation Framework allows IT Professionals to proactively monitor, manage and maintain distributed IT infrastructure remotely, easily and efficiently with one integrated Web based platform. Kaseya’s technology is licensed on over three million machines worldwide. For a free 30 day trial of the Kaseya solution, please visit http://www.kaseya.com/forms/download.php.