Actually, that is a bit of a misstatement. We don’t save less power. We save more power, but we will report lower savings than our competitors and we’re really proud of it.
If this has now caught your attention you are probably asking why? Let us elaborate…
The simple reason for this is because we have the most dependable and accurate reporting in the PC Power Management technology space. There is just no denying this.
Why does accurate reporting matter?
Simply put, many customers around the world are using this to report saving to make press releases, report back to shareholders and are just beginning to understand how they are going to report this for legislative reasons. In short this is data that you absolutely need to be accurate.
Surely accuracy is not really that important? Surely “good enough” is good enough?
Many vendors refer to their reporting as “good enough”, indeed we have heard customers saying things like…”we don’t need anything fancy… we just need good enough”. Indeed… some might compare this to a cheap knockoff versus a beautifully crafted Swiss timepiece. The cheap one is good enough to tell the time. So “good enough”…must be good enough?
Unfortunately this is not the case with the alternatives in the power management space. If we were to tell you we were 5 or even 10 % off when giving you a savings report, then this would probably be good enough right? What if it was more like 100% out? Not so great.
Many solutions on the market use a single energy rate for all machines, irrespective of make and model. These provide consistently inaccurate data which is not worth the paper it is printed on. Many even claim to have made savings they have not even made, using your existing power policies as part of their savings claims. Run that past me again!
We can prove it…
Imagine getting a call from someone saying that they can save you R150 per month on your cell phone bill. When you get into it, they’re not saving you money compared to your current provider, they’re actually comparing it to the most expensive provider that they could find out there. Would you buy from these guys? Once you’d discovered that… would you trust anything they said?
Imagine I’m an IT manager implementing power management. I’ve chosen a product. I upgrade my clients and turn it on. I wait a week or so to observe what is going on… I just want to check out the reports. More importantly I haven’t yet turned on power management… just monitoring of power state. I now go to the reports and run the savings report…. Savings to date R36,000… What?
Many solutions compare currently observed power behaviour against an assumption that machines were on 24*7 before this great initiative. Let me put that another way… before I put a single PC to sleep – The system claims to have saved a shed load of money.
How is it doing this? The solution is assuming that it is responsible for each and every time that a user has closed the lid of the laptop or turned off their PC of their own volition. Naturally, when you actually turn on power management that number just gets bigger, but it’s rotten at the core…. Imagine running a power savings report prior to implementing power management and seeing any other number than zero… Could you take that savings report to your shareholders, the press or the government? Is it of any value even to prove savings internally?
So we know you’re expecting us to tell you why we’re better and you can trust us….
In the NightWatchman world it’s much more honest and accurate. Install clients in reporting mode. Wait for a period of time (say 2 weeks). Some PCs were turned off by end users, some were laptops and put in a drawer at night etc. We could turn on power savings, but for sanity, let’s view consumption data etc. We can also run the savings report. Create a Behaviour model against current observed user activity, this is a cool new V6 feature and is a two or three click wizard – very simple.
We run the savings report and it will show $0 savings – good – we haven’t even turned power management on yet. Turn on power management and leave for another period. Review savings report again. Create a second Behaviour model for the power managed machines and run savings report again comparing the first and second behaviour models and it show the difference. It’s really simple.
OK… So their reporting is nonsense, but under the hood we’re actually saving the same amount of power right? It’s just a reporting thing?
No it’s not just a reporting thing. We actually save you more power because:
- We cater for complexity better than anyone. “One size fits all” solutions just don’t cut it.
- We significantly enhance systems management tools like SCCM 2012 or Altiris. We are designed for efficiency, they are designed for systems management.
- We support Mac. Maybe not a big deal, but more platforms = more savings.
- We can resolve sleeplessness (PC insomnia) and place the machines into a low power state. This is a huge problem.
- We do standby, hibernate, full power off and reboot without losing any user data. This is huge. If you can’t reboot without losing user data, you can’t patch at night so you end up asking your users to reboot during the day. If you reboot anyway you lose work and waste more money than you’ll ever save.
- We’ve been doing this for 15 years. You can’t just hack it in in 6 months. There are so many edge cases and we have dealt with them.
- Exceptions – “you can’t manage my machine because of” . NightWatchman is extensible so that we can side step almost any weird situation and still save more power.
Food for thought?