Trends Report

How Much Money Are Your Idle PCs Wasting?

PC Power Management Best Practices And Software Can Save Millions

December 5th, 2008
Doug Washburn, VP, Research Products
Doug Washburn VP, Research Products
Onica King, null
Onica King
With contributor:
Natalie Lambert

Summary

Enterprise PCs are wasting money. Far too many organizations leave economic and environmental value on the table by not reducing PC-related energy costs. Unfortunately, common misconceptions — like alleged power surges when turning on PCs or the presumed energy-saving benefits of screen savers — can inhibit organizations from taking action or even lead to more energy-inefficient behaviors. Forrester recommends organizations take a "time-based" approach to PC power management — and then maximize gains by powering down PCs during nights and weekends, applying industry best practices (e.g., activate "standby" after 30 minutes), and enabling power management on as many assets as possible. To help ensure benefits are actually achieved and tracked, IT ops professionals should consider PC power management software by client management suite vendors such as 1E, BigFix, LANDesk, or ScriptLogic that offers useful provisioning, administration, power settings, and reporting capabilities. In addition, IT ops professionals must work with the business to market and promote to the organization the value of PC power management.

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