NightWatchman 6 Aims To Cut IT Power Bills

Datamation content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.

Software and services firm 1E said it began shipping the latest update to its automated power management software on Monday.

NightWatchman 6 is part of 1E’sline of software designed to help identify and eliminate IT waste.

The latest version of the company’s smart electricity throttling package features a new web-based dashboard designed to provide senior managers with an enterprise overview of power usage and savings.

“Organizations can significantly lower energy costs without impacting user productivity by powering down computers remotely and automatically overnight and at weekends, immediately reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions,” a company statement said.

The dashboard enables managers to choose from a range of selectable tiles to display, including NightWatchman, WakeUp (which supports wake-on-lan technologies) and, NightWatchman Server Edition.

Views that senior managers can monitor include desktop and server savings, as well as daily, monthly, and “to date” savings, and costs. The dashboard can also display most expensive departments and buildings, along with EnergyStar compliance.

Version 6 also features an integrated tariff system that calculates tariffs based on geographic location and energy provider. Managers can input new tariff and CO2 emissions information — and the package works with both PCs and Macs for secure, remotely and centrally-controlled power management, according to 1E statements.

Energy consumption is calculated based on statistics for the users’ specific makes and models of PCs and laptops in the customer’s network.

The company, which has headquarters in both London and New York, said it has sold 4.6 million licenses of NightWatchman and claims to have saved IT customers some $530 million in electricity costs, globally.

“[That] represents savings of 5.6 million megawatts of electricity or 4 million metric tons of CO2 emissions,” 1E said.

In fact, a recent Gartner report estimated that energy-related charges make up about 12 percent of data center spendingand are the fastest rising data center expenses.

Stuart J. Johnston is a contributing writer at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @stuartj1000.