Reduce your costs with good power management

Power management has obvious benefits for all organisations, particularly smaller businesses looking to reduce costs. As well as making a tangible difference to your bottom line, cutting power use can also make your IT easier to manage.

However, according to research by tech analyst firm Ovum, organisations are missing out on opportunities to reduce average annual power consumption by around 40%.

They say this is because IT departments worry that PC power management solutions could disrupt IT operations.

But power management makes a lot of sense. Here’s why.

The right power management approach

Successful PC power management means reducing the amount of time that computing hardware is left switched on but unused, therefore wasting electricity. 

If you can control a system’s power profile so it only runs when it’s needed, you’ll reduce energy consumption and save money.

No matter what size your business, you can manage how power is used across a whole network of users. You can power down certain components - such as hard drives or monitors - place computers and servers into low power modes or simply shut down entire systems.

If your company has different groups of users with specific IT needs, you can create different power management policies to meet them.

Power management benefits

Reducing the usage of your system can reduce your wider support expenses as well. For example, by cutting the time that a server spends running at maximum capacity, additional costs such as air conditioning can be reduced too.

What’s more, efficient use of hardware lowers wear and tear, meaning your repair and replacement costs will also be lower. 

A good place to start is with power management applications that provide energy consumption reporting. This will show you where energy consumption has been reduced. You could try Dell’s OpenManage Power Center.

Save time, simplify maintenance

PC power management strategies can be made even more effective by linking them up with systems management tools. Systems management helps businesses speed up their patching, update and IT maintenance processes, by carrying them out automatically, usually once staff have gone home for the night.

Some systems management solutions include a PC power management feature that makes sure PCs are always optimised for power savings.

Rather than having to leave machines on overnight or cut into work time for updates to be completed, combining power and systems management means maintenance can be scheduled overnight with machines powering on and off as necessary. 

If your business has several computers but doesn’t have an automatic way to roll out updates, it’s worth evaluating solutions that also have a PC power management feature.

Reduce power, reduce your environmental footprint

Any business that needs or wants to reduce its environmental footprint must undertake power management. Reduced energy consumption means lower CO2 emissions.

Small things can make a big difference here. A pre-programmed power management system can guarantee power management policies are automatically implemented. For instance, you don’t need to rely on your staff to remember to shut their computers down at the end of the day.

As businesses face the prospect of rising energy costs, there is a growing financial case for investing in PC power management. Modern power management tools can help your business tackle increasing bills by cutting energy use dramatically.

• Can the cloud make you more efficient?
• Are you ready to discard your computers?
• How much computing power is wasted in your business?