ovum: selecting a pc power management solution vendor

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Selecting a PC Power Management Solution Vendor (OI00139-020)

Ovum (Published 12/2011) Page 1

This report is a licensed product and is not to be photocopied

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 CO2 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

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


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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 CO2 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 low-

power 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


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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 1Catalyst 1Ovum view 1Key messages 1

MARKET LEADERS 6Market leaders: technology assessment 7Market leaders: market impact 8Market leaders: reporting 10

VENDOR ANALYSIS 111E 11

APPENDIX 14Ask the analyst 14Ovum ratings 14Extended methodology 14Disclaimer 15


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TABLE OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Leading PCPM solutions -- positioning and assessment 6Figure 2: Market leaders - technology assessment 7Figure 3: Market leaders - market impact 9Figure 4: Market leaders - reporting 10Figure 5: 1E PCPM solution assessments 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 O V U M


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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


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


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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 impactMarket 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


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


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 refreshcycles, 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


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


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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 andbolster 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 web-

based 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 ofthe 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

[email protected]

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
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


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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 anyform 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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