When we first started to develop NightWatchman for desktop computers, it rapidly became clear that the potential for energy savings within most organizations was huge. You only had to wander through the streets of any major city after dark (as we often like to do here at 1E) and bathe in the glow of lights of all shapes and sizes. Energy was cheap, and it's easy to put energy efficiency to the bottom of your to-do list when it's not affecting your bottom line.

Then things started to change. As energy prices rose, so did the awareness of some savvy IT managers, as the vision of endless banks of vacant desks illuminated by screens suddenly equated to dollars which were coming out of their dwindling budgets.
However, one thing that always puzzled me was the lack of joined up thinking beyond the obvious realms of PC and eventually Server and datacenter management, and the guys who run the other facilities such as HVAC , lights, water.. After all, it's all energy right?

We often used to come up against a brick wall of an objection to computer power management in the form of an IT boss who would usually resort to something along the lines of 'We don't pay the power bill so why should we care about saving electricity in this department?' Good Point! Recently however I've been catching snippets of stories that seem to indicate that things are finally changing. The question that still remains for me however is 'can company wide energy management programs ever work'?

Recent announcement by some fairly large players seem to suggest that some people think that is can.

As Heather Clancy from  SmartPlanet recently reported, IBM and CICSCO are both launching initiatives that will see IT solutions such as IBM's Tivoli integrated with specialists in the sphere of buildings management such as Johnson Controls. The objective of these endeavours is to create solutions which will bring all energy management programs under one company wide project.  The end result should be Smart everything - buildings, IT, transport, you name it it will be smart..

What's also important too is the overall emissions reporting. It's no use implementing all of this smart energy saving kit is you can't quantify the savings, so IBM and Johnson Controls are working to include carbon reporting into the whole solution.

Even on a smaller scale, buildings managers who are implementing energy savings projects are actually having to  talk to the guys in  down in the basement in IT (poor souls!), after finally realizing the savings possible and the fact that PC and Server Power Management solutions like NightWatchman can make a huge contribution to overall savings companywide. In fact it would be great to see IT and Buildings management integrated by the likes of the  US Green Buildings Council. This would truly add some traction to the cause by fully incorporating computer power management into their LEED certification program

We think that this is an interesting space to watch in 2010, as more players realise the potential for partnering with other best of breed energy management providers in order to create solutions that are ultimately more attractive to corporates who are looking to save energy whether it be for financial, legislative or even moral reasons. And while I am not usually a proponent of bigger is better, I think that the sooner energy management is taken seriously on a huge scale by the likes of IBM, CISCO, Power Companies and governments the better.

IBM Green Buildings

CICSCO Smart Connected Real Estate

Johnson Controls