When embarking on its project to reduce PC energy consumption, Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority had a clear goal in mind – to make its business operations carbon neutral by 2010 and to reduce carbon emissions of its precincts by 80% by 2020.
The Foreshore Authority deployed NightWatchman the PC power management solution from 1E across its entire estate of PCs. For maximum impact, it kicked off the project during Earth Hour, a global sustainability movement which started in Sydney in 2007 and now has the participation of over 50 million people across 35 countries.
NightWatchman was used to shutdown all computers automatically at 7pm each day to save on energy costs. With this power policy, any users still working at that time, were able to defer the shutdown, if they needed to complete an important assignment.
NightWatchman provides the Foreshore Authority’s management with unparalleled reporting, which is based on actual machine make and model power consumption figures and local energy tariffs. This meant that any changes to power consumption could be tracked and details of PC usage patterns could be used to identify where improvements could be made. The WakeUp component of NightWatchman facilitates automatic software patching and upgrades to be done after hours, when energy tariffs are cheaper and with zero disruption to the end user.
The solution found that NightWatchman did not only provide them with a baseline measurement of its PC energy consumption, but as important, it was a platform they could use to evangelize the benefits of such a project to other stakeholders within the business.
The deployment of NightWatchman by the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority has reduced power costs and associated CO2 emissions from computers by 51% since implementation. The results of the project are continually communicated to the business. Results were published on the intranet, discussed in project management meetings and made visible throughout the business. This provided a high level of business understanding, ownership and cooperation to keep the momentum of the project going.
Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority has since continued to make its infrastructure more efficient and sustainable. It has consolidated servers, deployed virtualization, enabled dynamic power management on servers and invested in new ‘greener’ hardware.
