1E Blogs - Insight and debate on IT Efficiency

Microsoft System Center User Group Expands to New York

Karolina Shaw — Wed, 16 May 2012 08:48:16 +0000

The System Center User Group has announced its expansion to the greater New York City area this spring. With the support of Microsoft and several local partners, including 1E partner Software Logic and 1E, the System Center User Group is expanding its vibrant IT community to New York.

The non-profit group brings IT professionals together in a structured forum to discover, discuss, and debate current and next-generation systems management solutions from Microsoft with a focus on Microsoft System Center 2012 and core infrastructure technologies such as Windows Server and Hyper-V.

The New York chapter's first meeting will be held at the Microsoft Technology Center in New York City on Thursday, May 22 at 5:30 p.m. The agenda for the first meeting will be a best of Microsoft Management Summit 2012 review and live demonstrations of next generation Windows Server 2012 beta, Hyper-V 3.0, Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Service Pack 1 CTP, and Windows 8. Event registration is open and available at the User Group Website.

More information about the System Center User Group is found here: http://systemcenterusergroup.net/
More information about the group’s expansion into New York is found here: http://philly.citybizlist.com/2/2012/5/15/System-Center-User-Group-Announces-Addition-of-New-York-Chapter.aspx

How a more efficient IT infrastructure helped save Parker Hannifin millions

Karolina Shaw — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:02:20 +0000

Jonny Williamson talks about the savings that our customer Parker Hannifin has seen after implementing 1E solutions on Digital Manufacturing today. Thanks Jonny!

In his article, Jonny explains that Parker needed to streamline its IT systems management, eliminate waste and reduce costs, without detrimentally affecting reliability and maintaining efficiency. He talks of how Parker’s IT team identified a range of issues contributing to unnecessary operational costs including power-wasting PCs, unused software licences and time-consuming software updates, patches and distributions.

Jonny’s article goes on to outline that Parker used the integrated suite 1E software to help reduce server numbers, network bandwidth constraints, software licences and energy consumption. Parker’s IT Project Leader, Michael Powlison said:

“No other solution on the market is as proven or robust as 1E’s. Its products work together seamlessly and are tightly integrated – providing the only comprehensive IT efficiency and power management solution that integrates with Microsoft’s System Centre Configuration Manager Platform (ConfigMgr).

“1E exponentially extended the functionality of ConfigMgr. In fact our investment in Microsoft’s systems management software would have been a massive drain if we didn’t implement 1E’s IT efficiency solutions. In addition to its technical prowess and commitment to customer service, 1E’s close relationship with Microsoft’s made it an easy choice.”

To read the full article, click here: http://www.manufacturingdigital.com/lean/how-a-more-efficient-it-infrastructure-helped-save-one-company-millions
To read the full case study, click here: http://www.1e.com/wp-content/plugins/1E-Resources/includes/viewdoc.php?id=43313419&key=key-z2muz63534uxgmiap1i

Microsoft Management Summit comes to Europe this week

Pauline Hagan — Tue, 08 May 2012 08:57:44 +0000

MMS Road Show tours the UK, France and in Germany over the next two weeks

Following the excitement of Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas last month, here at 1E we’re really looking forward to the Best of MMS road show that will see Microsoft and its partners tour the UK, France and in Germany over the next two weeks.

When?
Our first stop is in Manchester today, Tuesday, 8th May.

What?
Microsoft has a very exciting wave of new product launches and announcements this year, starting with the release of System Center Configuration Manager 2012. ConfigMgr 2012 helps companies empower people to use the devices and applications they need to be productive, while maintaining corporate compliance and control. With 1E, organizations benefit from simple deployment of powerful tools that streamline IT management, efficient use of corporate IT resources and real savings in money and time.

Throughout the Best of MMS road show, we’ll be showing how our tight integration with the new ConfigMgr 2012 brings solutions that optimize the client experience, embrace consumerization and deliver greater IT efficiency. Come and see us to:

discover how to deliver faster, lower cost and automated OS deployments with ConfigMgr 2012 and Nomad Enterprise™
learn how to save software license costs through user-centric reclaim with ConfigMgr 2012 and AppClarity™
find out how to provide best-of-breed server and PC power management for enterprises with NightWatchman® Enterprise
enable a consumerized approach to Operating System deployments with ConfigMgr 2012 and Shopping™
discover how to measure, monitor and maximize the efficiency of all your servers as well as optimizing private cloud with NightWatchman® Server Edition

As Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President MSD, Microsoft Corporation, puts it: “Microsoft System Center 2012 Configuration Manager and 1E’s suite of tools create a powerful way to manage the complexities and expense of today’s IT environment. Together, they give IT managers the tools they need to derive higher value and efficiency from IT infrastructure.”

Where?
Hilton Manchester Deansgate Hotel, 303 Deansgate, Manchester M3 4LQ

Here’s where else you can find us over the next two weeks:

Best of MMS Europe road show schedule

Best of MMS Manchester – 8^th May at the Hilton Manchester Deansgate Hotel
Best of MMS Paris – 9^th May at the Issy-les-Moulineaux Microsoft campus
Best of MMS Germany – 9^th May at the Congress Park Hanau in Frankfurt-Hanau
Best of MMS Reading – 10^th May at the Microsoft campus in Thames Valley Park
Best of MMS London – 17^th May at the Microsoft campus in London Victoria, Cardinal Place

…and for a hat-trick of 1E updates, NightWatchman Server Edition 2.9 is here

Andy Hawkins — Thu, 03 May 2012 13:03:51 +0000

Our development teams have been busy!

To bring us to a 1E hat-trick of product announcements this week, we are today releasing NightWatchman Server Edition 2.9, hot on the heels of having been referenced in a section of Gartner’s most recent DCIM Cool Vendors report.

In the report, the analysts state that “by 2015, Datacenter Infrastructure Management (DCIM) tools and processes will grow from 5% penetration in 2011 to 60%.” The Gartner analyst team recommended that IT executives should “make DCIM a mandatory requirement for all major data center builds and refurbishments” and “architect the integration of IT operations management, building management systems and DCIM.” Further they believe “DCIM is likely to be self-funding; the cost of the tools is likely to be offset by the savings in power costs that DCIM helps enable.”

We're really pleased to be included in the report after first being named a Cool Vendor in IT Support in 2008 by Gartner [ii].

To date, 1E has helped more than 1,600 customers make $800m savings energy costs with our suite of energy management solutions, including flagship PC Power Management solution NightWatchman Enterprise. This has led to a reduction in CO₂ emissions of 5.8 million tonnes – the equivalent emissions of one and a half coal-fired power stations in one year.

This latest release of NightWatchman Server Edition features improvements in reporting, server life-cycle management and support for Microsoft SQL Server 2012.

These are busy and exciting times here at 1E towers. Without giving too much away, you can expect more from the NightWatchman Server Edition team soon. For now, please visit the NightWatchman Server Edition page or contact us to hear more about version 2.9.

New features for Shopping 4.5

Dave Harding — Tue, 01 May 2012 13:46:59 +0000

We’re delighted to announce the latest version of Shopping.
Its new features are:

ConfigMgr 2012 Application model support - Shopping 4.5 is fully tested against ConfigMgr 2012 RTM release. Shopping supports both user-centric and machine-centric application deployments using the new App model, including supporting any deployment type scenario supported by ConfigMgr.

Cross Browser Support - Shopping 4.5 now supports Chrome, Firefox, as well as IE 7+.

AD Group Rental – It is now possible for a user to remove themselves from an AD group that they joined through Shopping – ‘uninstalling’ their membership. This also allows non-ConfigMgr applications to have rental – extending the workflow to allow the removal as well as the addition of AD group membership. This feature is particularly useful for customers who have AppV deployments driven by AD group membership.

For more information about Shopping, click here or get in touch.

Latest version of NightWatchman Enterprise is here

Mark Blackburn — Tue, 01 May 2012 12:31:03 +0000

With this release of NightWatchman Enterprise, we’ve now included:

1.Flexible Shutdown Schedules
You can now set a different power down time, action and logoff action for every day of the week. This increases savings by enabling a more flexible approach to power management scheduling, supporting customers’ specific business needs.

It is also possible to change the power action and log off action to different settings for each day of the week. This is useful for any customers wishing to put a PC to sleep on week days, so that they can be turned on faster, but wanting to fully shutdown the machine at weekends in order to increase savings and force a system reboot.

2.System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Support
Our flagship product now fully integrates with System Center 2012 Configuration Manager, which is what makes it best-of-breed – it’s the only PC power management product on the market to do so. This includes:

ConfigMgr pending job shutdown deferral – shutdowns are deferred if a ConfigMgr job is going to run within a configurable window of time.
WakeUp integration – for software distributions
Computer Health™ collections – displaying computers that have failed health tests in a predefined set of collections. Computer Health ensures that a PC’s critical services and settings are functioning correctly. With the secure and robust Wake on LAN capability built-in to NightWatchman Enterprise, patching and software updates continue to be simple, cheap and safe.
Console right-click actions – on demand wake up and on demand policy and computer health checks.

We have a fantastic baker amongst our NightWatchman Enterprise testing team who makes scrummy bakes so we'll be indulging in some of these cupcakes today!

For more information about NightWatchman Enterprise, take a look here: http://www.1e.com/it-efficiency/software/nightwatchman-enterprise-pc-power-management/ or contact us!

US Dept of State is a 2012 InfoWorld superstar of sustainable IT

Karolina Shaw — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 08:32:41 +0000

We're delighted to say that 1E customer the US Department of State, is recognised by InfoWorld as a 2012 superstar of sustainable IT!

Federal mandates assess agencies on a variety of sustainability areas, including energy management. Historically, the Department mandated that all 88,986 desktops at 468 worldwide sites – comprised of domestic facilities, embassies, consulates, and passport agencies – be kept on 24/7 to ensure regular security scanning, maintenance, and patching. To comply with federal mandates and support the Department’s Greening Diplomacy Initiative, the Department launched an agency-wide initiative to eliminate power waste across 100 percent of its workstation computers.

With projected savings worldwide of several million dollars per year when fully implemented, the power management initiative now eliminates more than 21,000 metric tons of carbon emissions per year. The Department also automates patch deployment and network scanning during off hours to save system administrator time.

NightWatchman® Enterprise helped the Department automate the shutdown of unused workstations while maintaining security and minimizing disruption. Integrating seamlessly with the Department’s Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) platform, it also offers robust reporting capabilities that accurately report power and carbon consumption savings through a highly customized dashboard. In addition,WakeUp™ – the Wake-on-LAN feature of NightWatchman Enterprise – allows Department site workstations to be powered on for patching, scanning, health checks and software installation. These tasks can now be performed during non-business hours, minimizing impact to normal day-to-day business operations.

Read the InfoWorld article here: http://www.networkworld.com/slideshow/43530#slide15

Read our press release announcing the customer story here: http://www.1e.com/mediacenter/u-s-department-of-state/

For a list of all recognition awarded to 1E in the last few years, take a look at: http://www.1e.com/it-efficiency/about-1e/awards/

Iteration-free Innovation the 1E way

Karolina Shaw — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:42:23 +0000

The concept of no meeting Fridays is not new. Many organisations, whether start-ups or otherwise have adopted this approach. In time the concept has evolved from being just ‘thinking time’ away from hectic schedules and to do lists. Google’s ‘20 percent time’, for example, enables engineers to spend one day a week working on projects that aren't in their job description.

Is this an indulgence reserved for innovative, fast-growing and dynamic companies? Perhaps, but it also instils passion, job satisfaction and creative thinking, or so argues 1E senior software engineer Ed Sykes. Ed blogged his way through last weeks’ iteration-free day here at 1E. See his blog here: http://edsykes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/iteration-free-day-at-1e.html

Creations fell into three broad categories: new-product innovation; operational excellence; in-product innovation. Over thirty potential innovations were presented, from developing mobile applications (iPhone and Android) that allow on-the-go presentation of the insights into their IT environments our customers get from our products, technology that can improve build times on our machines to diagnostics and time-saving features that would make our Solution Engineers’ live easier.

Like any good iteration day, there was a winning team at the end. The winners were Venkat and Clement, who celebrated with a cup of tea and a friendly chat about who was going to keep the iPad that they had won – any prizes for guessing who came out on top?!

We’ve made a few changes to AppClarity and Shopping

Dave Harding — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 05:46:52 +0000

We’ve added a new consumerized dimension to Windows® 7 deployments and software distribution with the integration of AppClarity and Shopping. In the 12 months’ since its inception, AppClarity is now in version 3.0 and integrates with 1E’s self-service corporate app store Shopping™ 4.2. Now that we have combined them, the two products show users which applications they actually use and allows then to select which applications they want to migrate over to a new Operating System.

Why did we do this? Well, two reasons really:

The consumerization of IT is rapidly changing business models. Allowing employees to work to their best ability with the tools that suit their working practices is essential
Independent research shows us that almost three quarters of organizations in the United States (71%) and United Kingdom (68%) admit to having software waste and two thirds of users can spend up to a week or more waiting for software from the IT helpdesk

With AppClarity 3.0, Software Asset Managers (SAMs) are now able to:

Manage licenses by department and region: assign licenses to a global pool or management group. A role-based security option allows license managers to see which other groups have spare licenses before committing to buying more.
View software in many different ways: by department, region, function, or as determined internally. Use the information to create an inter-department competition to improve software efficiency and ‘name and shame’ the more inefficient parts of the business into taking action.
Set different software policies for different groups: organizations can prohibit a certain application in all departments or only in some. Additional flexibility with software license reclaim is possible by restricting this functionality to a limited or entire group of users.
Consider downgrading premium editions of Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite: if usage is low, this presents new opportunities to reallocate licenses, facilitate maintenance renewal and enterprise agreement negotiation.

Identify which PCs a product is installed on: with a built-in Product Deployment report and facilitate opportunities for license reclaim.

Shopping 4.2 includes the following new benefits:

Self-service OS deployments: based on application usage ratings, users can select to have only the software they actually use reinstalled onto their PC during an OS migration.
My Software: a page which lets users identify the applications currently installed on their PC and cancel any pending orders for applications that they no longer need.
Savings to date dashboard: displays an estimated measure of the IT helpdesk savings that an organization has achieved as a result of using Shopping.
Enhanced user experience: all configuration options are now shown in a single location, making it easier for users to locate all available applications quickly.

Shopping empowers users to request and install software, operating systems and services within minutes at a time that suits them. This approach increases the efficiency software delivery and saves $40 on average per request to the IT helpdesk. Shopping 4.2 is fully tested against the legacy (package/program) model of Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) 2012 RC2. Since its inception, 1E has sold 2.3 million licenses of Shopping worldwide. Customers include UNUM, Syngenta, Dell, Parker Hannifin and Park Hill Schools.

AppClarity from 1E launched in April 2011 with the full support of the International Association of Information Technology Asset Managers (IAITAM) and the Federation Against Software Theft Investors in Software (FASTIiS). The software enables users to eliminate unused software from their corporate PCs by only selecting to migrate the most frequently used applications during a Windows 7 upgrade. This user-driven selection process facilitates the reclaim of an unused application and corresponding license, helping organisations save time and money during OS migrations. Customers include 3M, Aptar Group, Arup, ERM and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

If you’re interested in more information about 1E’s approach to Windows 7 deployments, please download our Windows migration services solution sheet here

1E IAITAM Software Efficiency study 2011 conducted by Opinion Matters

1E Help Desk Efficiency Report 2010 conducted by Vanson Bourne

1E is Green IT Company of 2012 – it’s official!

Karolina Shaw — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 08:28:10 +0000

We're all feeling a bit proud of ourselves here at 1E HQ today. Here's why:

We made it! It was the biggest award of the night and we're absolutely delighted with it. We'll be wearing the badge with pride for the next 365 days.

A big thanks to our customers from ERM, Alliance Boots and Balfour Beatty WorkPlace who joined our celebrations last night. An equally big shout out to Brian Wall, editor of Green IT magazine; Josh Boulton, publisher and all of our friends at BTC for a very enjoyable evening at the Zoo.

We'll be watering our Lily with pride and look forward to the fourth Green IT awards in 2013!