AT&T (Finally!) Installing Energy-Saving Software on Its Computers
by Jaymi Heimbuch, San Francisco, California 
on 10.31.08
Photo via MrBill
Apparently it only took the economy taking a tumble to finally get AT&T to install some “duh” energy-saving (and therefore money-saving) software onto 310,000 desktop computers at their US facilities. This tiny fix adds up to some huge numbers...
"For the IT function at AT&T, our emphasis is doing more work with less energy and using products that are minimally impacting the environment," said Rick Felts, AT&T senior vice president of Information Technology Operations.
Yeah, sure. It's all about the environment. Um, and maybe a massive amount of money too.
AT&T expects to save about 135 million kWh thanks to the software, which means roughly $13.6 million saved annually. And on a greener scale, it also means about 120,000 tons of CO2 saved each year.
Companies are notorious for allowing PCs to stay on all night - partly the fault of employees, and partly of the companies. Yet, such an action costs businesses an estimated $1.7 billion annually. So, the software of choice is 1e, which keeps PCs accessible for upgrades even while they’re powered down.
Whatever AT&T's motives, the move is wonderful. Thankfully, more companies than just AT&T are catching on to these little tweaks for big savings, and energy conservation is earning a prime seat in business plans.
Via Greener Computing
More on Energy-Saving Software:
Interview: Verdiem, Making Computers Use Less Energy
7 Downloads That Turn Your PC From Energy Sucker to Energy Sipper
CO2 Saver: Toolbar Reduces, Measures Computer Energy Use, Carbon Emissions
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It's tough to look at that monstrous lump of architecture and not see a company that's woefully out of kilter with any concept of eco...
Such a giant company, like AT&T should have done this long time ago...
Verizon last year has installed 5,000 thin clients, which use 5-7W of power and requires fewer components to build than a traditional desktop. They also have a much longer service life than traditional desktops. I still use 5+ year old thin clients without any problems.
http://blogs.sun.com/jimlaurent/entry/sun_ray_thin_client_saves
310,000 is much larger than 5,000, but keep in mind that desktops eventually have to be swapped out every 2-4 years for most companies. 310,000 desktops every few years is alot of waste
Updating 310,000 computers is not a simple click and go process.
I work at a company with over 25,000 computers and we are very highly automated, but a system wide update generally results in about a 2% failure rate per update.
So, if we uninstall an old program, about 500 computers will have an issue. We then install another program to replace it, another 500 computers will have a problem. That is 1000 computers that will have issues that need to be addressed. Then there are all the 'secondary' complaints where people will suddenly decide to call in their normal problems because 'it must be from the update'.
After that you need to troubleshoot issues with your update. Suppose that your screens are shutting off to often for a certain application, but you set that as a global policy? Now you need to develop a work-around for that issue. Does your hard drive shut down if it isn't written to in 20 minutes? Fine, but then your program senses it as not-responding...
... and so on.
All the implementation and repair time costs money. For a telecomm company fighting with cable companies for business, I am guessing that it took a lot convincing to dig up the capital to invest in this project. You need to project the costs of downtime and lost productivity in to all of this. THen decide if it is cheaper to 'just wait another year'.
Part of the reason that companies leave their computer on all the time is so that they can update them on a regular basis while the users are not using them. It can also cause a major strain on the netwrok infrastructure if the majority of your computers get turned on and logged in a small window (7-9 am). I have seen that happen first hand and it can bring an entire company to its knees.
Where I work we are moving towards more energy efficent computers, but it is going to ake us about 6 years. These new computers allow us to power them down and power them up when needed from a remote station (V-PRO technology). Our operational cost to do it 'all at once' would be $40 million, not counting all of the problem calls.
To give an idea how hard it is to get money for projects, we determined that if we replaced all of our remaining CRT monitors (about 6000) with LCD monitors (about a $1.5-2 million for the project) that the power saving would clear the cost , of the monitors, in about 16-24 months. There is a direct 'return on investment' shown, but asking for the additional money in these tight times just doesn't work, out right now.
The best way I can explain it to people is "Imagine changing your tires on your car while still driving it." But this is Treehugger so... "Imagine changing the chain on you bicycle while riding it"
-Lego