Michael Kanellos

Ancient Software Program Gets New Life With Energy Efficiency Craze July 21, 2008 at 5:29 PM

Back in 1997, BigFix started marketing a tool that helped users diagnose problems with their PC. Later, the company sold essentially the same piece of software to help desks to analyze trends in customer complaints. After that, BigFix sold it as a tool to let large corporate customers download patches.

And now, the company’s products are being used to curb energy consumption, according to Dave Robbins, CEO of the company, and David Appelbaum, who heads up marketing. Stanford University and the University of California system uses it. And so does Kaiser Permanente. The health care giant has it on 230,000 devices, according to Robbins.

The software in all of its various incarnations does effectively the same thing. An agent downloaded onto the hard drive of a desktop monitors any changes made to the software profile. When something changes, the agent sends a message to a bank of servers back at BigFix. The servers then take corrective action. If an IT manager has set a rule that company employees can’t download MP3s onto a machine, the tool might wipe out the offending file or send a note to the employee that they need to get rid of it.

In energy management, the software prevents users from changing the power management settings, which, according to Appelbaum, happens all the time. Some studies have put the meddling figure as high as 85 percent, he claimed. It will also shut PCs off remotely, in case you forget to turn it off at night.

The company estimates that the application can save $10 to $50 per PC per year. The Miami-Dade School District put the software on 80,000 PCs last year and extrapolated it could save about $2.1 million a year. The school found that PCs with the software stayed on an average of 10.3 hours, less than half of the 20.75 hours PCs not put on the system ran.

Some utilities like PG&E also offer rebates to companies which employ this sort of software. The rebates are around $15 per PC.

A number of companies are out there marketing a distant kill switch like this. Verdiem, which got $12 million in VC funding last quarter, makes a similar product. Microsoft, Intel and Cisco are all dabbling in this area.

But how many of them have retrofitted an eleven year old program? That’s the technology equivalent of getting Tina Louise back on a sitcom. And they do have an impressive customer list. So hats off to them.

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