Three years ago, BNP Paribas London decided to integrate NightWatchman, a software-based solution designed to automatically shut down workstations at night and automatically turn them back on in the morning. Ever since, the program has not only been a true success story in the bank’s offices in London, but has also been implemented in Singapore, Japan, and Italy, and is being evaluated for use in France.

Keith Chester, Client Infrastructure Architecture, BNP Paribas London, talks to us about it:

“While workstations are off, they are not consuming electricity, with the benefits of the reduction of the cost of electricity to run the workstation, cost of air-conditioning, all of which is reducing CO2 emissions and contributing to the “Green” agenda.”

” The project consists of two stages: NightWatchman (which can perform any of the following commands: shut down, restart, log off, hibernate, or stand by) and SMSWakeUp, switching workstations back on.

The project consists of two components: NightWatchman to switch workstations off (which can be accomplished by shut down, or hibernate, or standby) and SMSWakeUp to switch workstations back on.
The NightWatchman / SMSWakeUp combination allow workstations to be powered off automatically out-of-hours whilst still allowing workstations to be patched overnight for operating system security updates (workstation are automatically woken up as the patch is installed and then switched off afterwards). All systems can be woken again at a pre-determined time every day (say 07:30 am, Monday to Friday).

Possible usage scenarios include Power (cost) savings, power-off workstations out of hours and at weekends, automated preparations for power-down days, regular scheduled reboot of workstations to reduce system instability, memory leaks, etc.”

Designed to be invisible for the workers, without changing anything in their daily routine, NightWatchman not only saves energy (about half of the consumption) but it also reduces CO2 emissions.

According to 1E PC Energy Report for 2009, “Collectively, US organizations waste $2.8 billion every year powering 108 million unused PCs. In 2009, these unused PCs are expected to emit approximately 20 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions – roughly equivalent to the impact of 4 million cars,”. L’Atelier North America, a BNP Paribas subsiary, points out that it is also personal, as well as corporate obligation to consider the environment and our impact on it. Read the full article