INDUSTRY SOLUTIONS GUIDE

Selecting a PC Power Management Solution Vendor

Weighing many options in a crowded market
Reference Code: OI00139-020 Publication Date: December 2011 Author: Rhonda Ascierto

SUMMARY
Catalyst
The cost of electricity is rising and for many organizations so too is their IT power bill. PC power management (PCPM) solutions can be a cost-effective way for organizations to reduce energy consumption, and therefore operating costs.

Ovum view
PCPM solutions are lightweight, relatively inexpensive, and easy to deploy. They deliver a fast return on investment, and while energy savings per machine are modest, they can deliver substantial operational savings when implemented across large fleets of machines.

Key messages
PCPM solutions save power, money, and carbon emissions Vendor estimates vary, but PCPM solutions can save organizations about $36 per computer per year just in computer power consumption. There may be additional savings in air conditioning because fewer powered-up computers will produce less heat. This typically equates to a 40% reduction in PC power costs or 380 kWh per PC per year or 586 pounds of CO 2 per user per year. Savings across desktop fleets are greater than across notebook or laptop deployments because mobile devices consume far less energy than desktop machines. The average desktop base unit consumes 52W and monitors consume 40W per year, while the average laptop's yearly Selecting a PC Power Management Solution Vendor (OI00139-020) Ovum (Published 12/2011) This report is a licensed product and is not to be photocopied Page 1

consumption is just 30W, though many organizations with large laptop fleets also supply employees with external monitors, raising overall power consumption. In either case, PCPM deployment can deliver worthwhile power, cost, and CO 2 savings. Power saving technologies built into operating systems are inadequate Many IT administrators have inflated expectations about the effectiveness of desktops' built-in power-saving technologies. Newer desktop machines and operating systems have improved power-saving features, such as the default setting in Windows 7 that switches a machine into sleep mode after an hour of idle time. However, a PCPM solution can deliver an additional 40% or more power savings than the features built into operating systems and desktops. Furthermore, many PCPM solutions enable after-hours remote access. Many corporate users override the default power-saving settings in Windows so they can remotely access their office PCs after hours. The typical PCPM savings of 40% or more also applies to desktop fleets that are managed by Microsoft's System Center Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) for endpoint management. While Microsoft's latest ConfigMgr release, R3, includes improved power management, it falls short of mature PCPM solutions on the market. For example, ConfigMgr will put PCs into sleep mode after a period of inactivity, whereas a PCPM solution will shut them down completely. PCPM solutions also have powerful controls for XP clients, while ConfigMgr does not. PCPM solutions can tackle PC insomnia Unlike built-in operating system power management systems, PCPM solutions tackle "PC insomnia", which occurs when a machine is idle yet unable to shut down or switch into a lowpower mode. PC insomnia occurs when the idle timer in the built-in power management system in Windows is kept active even when there is no user activity or purposeful CPU activity. This can be caused by applications that are not power-management-aware. Another culprit can be a faulty mouse with "pointer drift" that makes it appear that a user is present. Leading PCPM solutions commonly address PC insomnia by identifying and reporting on power consumption that seems uncharacteristic or unreasonable, and also by blacklisting certain applications that are known to cause to PC insomnia. Some PCPM solutions can also whitelist certain actions that may seem like PC insomnia but are not, such as, for example, downloading a large media file such as a movie, which requires no user involvement but causes substantial CPU activity. Reporting is key "You can't manage what you can't measure" is a well-worn phrase and for good cause when it comes to power management on desktops, monitors, and laptops. PCPM solutions can measure power, cost, and CO2 savings, and report these metrics to IT administrators and C-level executives. A PCPM solution with comprehensive reporting capabilities enables accurate and granular measurement of desktop power consumption. Insightful reports equip IT administrators Selecting a PC Power Management Solution Vendor (OI00139-020) Ovum (Published 12/2011) This report is a licensed product and is not to be photocopied Page 2

with data to create power-management policies that deliver greater power savings, as well as better-informed desktop configuration and hardware and software purchasing solutions. For example, PCPM reports can show the difference between Energy Star versus non-Energy Star computers to better justify sustainable procurement policies. PCPM reports also can show the energy consumption of different models and types of computer monitors in different offices within an organization. Market development relies on IT being involved in energy and sustainability The payback period for PCPM solutions is typically six months or sooner, and in the US the solution costs may be completely offset by utility rebates.

INDUSTRY SOLUTIONS GUIDE TO PCPM

In this report, Ovum examines the competitive landscape of PCPM solutions. This assessment is a quantitative and qualitative representation of Ovum's view and opinion about the competitive market environment for these solutions.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
SUMMARY Catalyst Ovum view Key messages MARKET LEADERS Market leaders: technology assessment Market leaders: market impact Market leaders: reporting VENDOR ANALYSIS 1E APPENDIX Ask the analyst Ovum ratings Extended methodology Disclaimer 1 1 1 1 6 7 8 10 11 11 14 14 14 14 15

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TABLE OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Figure 2: Figure 3: Figure 4: Figure 5: Leading PCPM solutions -- positioning and assessment Market leaders - technology assessment Market leaders - market impact Market leaders - reporting 1E PCPM solution assessments

6 7 9 10 11

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MARKET LEADERS
By focusing on giving IT administrators flexibility and choice with numerous dashboards and granular reporting capabilities, 1E has become one of the most influential and largest vendors in this market. Its customers include global Fortune 500 companies and public-sector organizations.

Figure 1: Leading PCPM solutions -- positioning and assessment

Source: Ovum

OVUM

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MARKET LEADERS
The competitive landscape varies across the evaluation categories covered in this report: technology assessment, market impact, and reporting.

Market leaders: technology assessment

As a testament to the strength of competition among PCPM solutions, seven of the 11 vendors in this report are positioned as market leaders for at least one of the technology assessment criteria.

Figure 2: Market leaders - technology assessment

Source: Ovum

OVUM

The highest scores for depth and breadth of function and features indicate that a solution is the best of its type on the market. These solutions, from market leaders 1E, IBM, and Verdiem, have the broadest range of functionality. No single vendor has the full complement of available PCPM features, but these three leaders come closest. Certain features offer obvious advantages to Selecting a PC Power Management Solution Vendor (OI00139-020) Ovum (Published 12/2011) This report is a licensed product and is not to be photocopied Page 7

organizations of all sizes and requirements, such as automatic remediation of PC insomnia. However, other features may not be as useful across the board. For example, 1E, IBM, and Verdiem (and others in this report) can limit the number of desktop wake-ups per second in order to avoid network overload. A vendor's maturity can be an indicator of its financial stability and long-term outlook, while a solution's maturity can speak to its level of development. 1E and Verdiem have the most mature PCPM solutions on the market, each with a lineage of more than 10 years. Ovum's usability assessment focuses on ease of use for both the IT administrator and the end user. Market leaders 1E, IBM, and Verdiem, as well as the fast-growing startup AVOB, dominate this area. Usability assesses how features and functions can be accessed and deployed, and includes factors such as training, whether data is automatically saved before a scheduled shut down, and whether end-user profiles and reports can be readily customized. In terms of security, it should be noted that all vendors' solutions in this report are highly secure. However, the leaders 1E, IBM, LANDesk, and Verdiem all lock or hibernate a device that has been left unattended for a designated period of time. All have been externally verified as being secure and provide encryption support for the US Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS), which is a required for US government procurement.

Market leaders: market impact

Market impact scores reflect a combination of commercial factors, including revenues, installed base, and geographic, vertical, and customer size-band reach. Figure 5 shows the highest-scoring vendors in each of these categories.

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Figure 3: Market leaders - market impact

Source: Ovum

OVUM

1E pulls away from the rest of the vendors in the PCPM landscape largely because of its high revenues, and its broad geographical and customer size-band reach (its customers are spread across small, mid-sized, and large companies). 1E has one of the largest PCPM installed bases and boasts some very large installations in high-profile Fortune 100 companies. Among pure-play PCPM vendors, 1E has the largest installed base.

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Market leaders: reporting

Figure 4: Market leaders - reporting

Source: Ovum

OVUM

1E ranks as the reporting leader by virtue of its expansive breadth and depth of reporting capabilities. NightWatchman Enterprise from 1E and other solutions include what-if analysis, which can compare actual and/or hypothetical groups of machines by make and model, software installed, or any other type of metric. This yields power-usage data for modeling for PC refresh cycles, as well as for determining the most energy-efficient deployment configurations.

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VENDOR ANALYSIS
1E
London-based 1E, with its suite of energy management software, is widely recognized as a top PCPM vendor. Since launching its flagship NightWatchman Enterprise desktop solution more than a decade ago, 1E has become a best-of-breed vendor.

Figure 5: 1E PCPM solution assessments

Source: Ovum

OVUM

Feature-rich NightWatchman Enterprise has found a wide following among large organizations, particularly in the public sector, and among Fortune 500 companies in the finance and services Selecting a PC Power Management Solution Vendor (OI00139-020) Ovum (Published 12/2011) This report is a licensed product and is not to be photocopied Page 11

industries. 1E has various-sized customers for NightWatchman Enterprise, including small organizations with 500 nodes. The 1E customer base is skewed heavily toward North America and Europe, though it is steadily expanding in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. NightWatchman Enterprise is a comprehensive, stand-alone power-management solution for desktops and laptops that has been certified by major US utilities that offer rebates for power savings. NightWatchman Enterprise takes a fine-grained approach to accuracy, reporting, and usability. Among its strengths, NightWatchman Enterprise features robust PC insomnia capabilities called Advanced Sleepless Client Detection, whose breadth and depth is a competitive differentiator. It reports on processes that prevent PCs from sleeping, such as anti-virus software and screensavers, and allows administrators to automatically override them. Moreover, NightWatchman Enterprise is one of only a handful of leading PCPM solutions that reports on other issues that can prevent a scheduled power-down, such as faulty keyboard/mouse activity, faulty drivers, spikes in CPU activity, and rogue processes that raise flags to operating systems for invalid reasons. Examples of rogue processes include network drivers keeping machines awake, or the operating system acting as though media is still playing when the program has been closed. While it does not compete head-to-head with endpoint management systems, NightWatchman Enterprise does include some optional management features, such as patch management, PC health monitoring, and automated remediation. These features are included in the solution and bolster 1Es position in the mid-market, where companies are less likely to have a comprehensive endpoint management system already in place. Another strength of NightWatchman Enterprise is that it determines a consumption baseline before deployment. This enables more accurate measurement of power savings because it is based on actual behavior and not assumptions. NightWatchman Enterprise includes automatic document recovery for all Windows applications, as well as IBM Lotus Notes and Lotus 1-2-3. IT administrators can whitelist home-grown applications and apply scripts to auto-recover other applications. One of the products other strengths is that it helps IT administrators and end users by providing about a dozen different end-user dashboards out of the box, including an executive version. Its dashboards include an end-user widget that shows energy consumed and saved, in dollars, watts, and CO2. Administrators also can customize dashboards and give each version a different look and features. 1E also scores strongly in remote management capabilities, which includes offering basic webbased PC access for remote situations through Microsofts Remote Desktop Protocol technology. This feature does not compete with more advanced remote-access technologies such as

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GoToMyPC and others. Instead, it offers remote access through either a customizable web portal or a mobile device, allowing end users to wake their office PC automatically before connecting. In addition to its tight integration with Windows platforms, it supports Mac computers, but not Linux machines. It is currently available only in English, French, and German, although further language support can be provided at an additional cost. However, it does support multi-currency reporting for multi-country deployments. 1E offers NightWatchman Enterprise via a perpetual or subscription on-premise license. However, it does not yet offer an agentless version of NightWatchman Enterprise with SaaS-based licensing. 1E recently began to offer a shared-savings model, in which customers pay back to 1E the cost of the solution with the power savings they achieve within a one-year period. Recommendation: shortlist NightWatchman Enterprise should be shortlisted by mid-to-large-size organizations that seek a best-of-breed, stand-alone PCPM solution that can also perform patch management and PC health remediation. NightWatchman Enterprise is an excellent choice for organizations with a focus on sustainability because its reports include CO2 consumption and savings, which can feed into company-wide sustainability reports.

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APPENDIX
Ask the analyst
Rhonda Ascierto, Senior Analyst, Energy and Sustainability Technology
rhonda.ascierto@ovum.com

Ovum ratings
Shortlist these vendors solutions should always be placed on an organization's shortlist for PCPM technology selection. This category represents the leading solutions that Ovum believes are worthy of a place on most technology selection shortlists. The vendor has established a commanding market position with a product that is widely accepted as best of breed.

Extended methodology
Ovum assesses PCPM solution vendors across three major dimensions: technology capability, market impact, and reporting features and functionality. Technology Ovum analysts score each vendor across seven major technology criteria, on a normalized scale of 1 to 10. The seven rating areas used for assessing the vendors in the PCPM market are: Remote configuration management Usability Security Maturity Functional breadth and depth Strategy and execution Scalability

Market impact Ovum uses data collected through primary and secondary research to determine a vendors global market impact. Market impact is measured across six categories, each of which has a maximum score of 10.

PCPM revenues Overall revenue growth

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Vertical reach Geographic reach Customer size-band coverage PCPM installed base Reporting

Disclaimer
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, Ovum (an Informa business). The facts of this report are believed to be correct at the time of publication but cannot be guaranteed. Please note that the findings, conclusions, and recommendations that Ovum delivers will be based on information gathered in good faith from both primary and secondary sources, whose accuracy we are not always in a position to guarantee. As such Ovum can accept no liability whatever for actions taken based on any information that may subsequently prove to be incorrect.

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