Sumir Karayi, CEO of 1E has decided to tackle one of the world’s biggest problems, energy use. Through is software solutions, Karayi is helping technologically intensive companies improve their power management capabilities, lower their energy consumption and save millions of dollars. The 1E team has already saved their clients (which range from Dell to SABMiller) more than $360 million and they’re only just gotten started. Our interview discusses 1E’s different offerings and what Karayi thinks about this growing sector.

Transcription:

Ben Lack: Well, I’m with Sumir Karayi, CEO of 1E. Thanks so much giving us some of your time.

Sumir Karayi: Hello, Ben. Thanks for having me.

Ben Lack: If you can start off by telling us a little bit about what 1E does.

Sumir Karayi: What 1E does is we help our clients save a lot of money through the elimination of inefficiency in IT. By which I mean, we identify and reduce hardware waste, software waste, people’s time waste, and most importantly, for this conference, energy waste. We are probably best known today for the energy that we are saving our clients, and we have saved our clients roughly $360 million worth of energy.

Ben Lack: And where is that energy being saved?

Sumir Karayi: Well, if you think about the PC and the desktop as well as the monitor, it’s ubiquitous and plentiful. In the United States alone, there are a hundred million PCs. Half of which are being left on overnight and on weekends. There’s a huge amount of waste. If you think about how much just the U.S. is wasting in terms of leaving computers on when they don’t need to be left on, it’s roughly $2.8 billion worth of energy. And this was independently gathered. And we commissioned this report with the Alliance to Save Energy.

Ben Lack: So what types of solutions does 1E have in order to help these companies save on energy when they’re not actually using their desktop or laptop computers?

Sumir Karayi: Well, we’ve got two solutions. We’ve got a solution called NightWatchman, and it’s companion product called Wakeup. What NightWatchman and Wakeup do together is that they ensure energy can be saved when possible without ever disrupting the business user but still letting IT provide critical patching. The sort of savings are pretty phenomenal. Dell quantified the savings through hardware measurement once they bought our solutions at being $36 per PC per year. So across fifty thousand computers, they’re saving about $1.8 million worth of energy.

Ben Lack: So is it just that you’re helping the computer go to sleep when it’s not being used or is it really more than just that?

Sumir Karayi: Well, it’s actually a lot more than that. We are now fifth generation of technology. We wrote the first version about ten years ago. We actually invented the space. The sort of features we have got today enable a business user to always be able to work. So if they’re at home, they can go to a web page and switch on their own computer at work. And they can still get data from it or run applications on it. When they’re working during the day, we can make sure the computers are not switched off just because they have gone to a meeting. If they’re running a certain application or downloading something from the internet and it takes two or three hours, well, actually, normal sleep time would just make the computer asleep. Because of all of these reasons, people often leave their computers on. IT still needs to patch the machines. So we make sure that whenever a patch is sent out to desktops or laptops, that machine is woken up again. Using all of these features, we can make sure that the computer’s available then we can do the easy bit which is actually switch the computer off when it’s not being used.

Ben Lack: So what types of education does 1E have in order to educate potential customers and existing customers about the solutions that you guys have?

Sumir Karayi: Well, what we have done is we’ve commissioned the only research in this space that was quantitative. So we worked with the Alliance to Save Energy, and we commissioned independent research with Kelton as well as Harris Data to look at behavior from PC and desktop space but also service space which I would like to tell you more about in a second. And what the research showed us was $2.8 billion can be saved just in the United States alone. Three hundred million pounds can be saved in the United Kingdom. Nine hundred and eighteen million euros can be saved in Germany. So the research was great, and this data was picked up by Good Morning, America, USA Today, a lot of mainstream press. What we’ve also done is we’ve got a version of our software that anyone can download, and they can implement it within their own organization and do a what-if analysis. So they can actually look at their own organization without spending a cent. They install the software, and the software tells them, “This is how much energy you can save in your organization, giving real data in your own organization.”

Ben Lack: So talk to me about the server side.

Sumir Karayi: Sure. A lot of our customers… we’ve got four million notes that we’ve sold, four million software licenses that we’ve sold of our desktop side. A lot of those customers said to us, “What are you doing on the server side?” So we commissioned some research first, and as usual, we innovate. The really interesting point of information that we found that roughly fifteen percent of all servers in data centers are doing nothing useful. So it wasn’t just that they’re consuming energy, they’re just not doing anything useful. So the best thing we can do is tell these servers off. Even better, we use these servers. Now if you extrapolate this to the  total forty-four million servers in data centers as stated by McKenzie, and if you think about the $4,000 or so dollars it cost to run a server, in total cost as according to IDC, then those five million servers across the world that are doing nothing are wasting $3.8 billion worth of energy and a further $21 billion in hardware, software, and operational time. This is a huge waste, $25 billion worth of waste. So we wrote a solution, NightWatchman Server Edition, that identifies this through useful work analysis. And because we invented this technology, we patented it. We also wrote a solution that identifies servers when they’re not doing something useful because most servers are not doing something useful all day long anyway. So when they’re not doing something useful, we actually put them in a drowsy state. So they’re still working. They can still respond to user requests, but they’re using only about seventy percent of the power. So on average, we’re drowsy. We get a further ten to twelve percent power savings across the data center. And all our measurements are done using software alone. If you’re not having to unplug servers, plug in new hardware just to figure out how much power they’re using, we can tell you that just through software modeling which is pretty advanced, and it derives from our ten-year-old product which is NightWatchman.

Ben Lack: So when you market your solutions, is the messaging more energy savings or the messaging more “You’re saving the climate. You’re lowering your CO2 carbon footprint?” How do you balance those two benefits?

Sumir Karayi: Well, every organization has a different motivation. But what we find is without an ROI for about a year or less, most organizations struggle really to fund solutions like ours, efficiency solutions. So the great thing is we provide best of both worlds. What we have got is, we’ve got energy savings happening year-on-year. So in the first year, you will write off either one of our solutions just in pure energy costs. And from then on, it’s money that can go into your bottom line, or you can reinvest it. Even better, reinvest in other energy efficiency projects. The benefits around green are great actually. The benefits are simply from making the stakeholders of each one of our customers happier. So, for example, when AT&T went to market with our solution, when AT&T bought our solution and deployed it, they could save something like the energy of fifteen thousand homes. Of course, that makes a real big difference. If you think about all the energy that we can potentially save across the United States, it’s roughly the same in emissions terms as all the cars in the state of Maryland. So we can make a tangible difference. And we’re doing it today for AT&T, for HSBC, for CSC, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, who are really a leading light in the energy efficiency space, and many other organizations. Actually we have over twenty-five clients that have over one hundred thousand PCs today.

Ben Lack: So what do governments need to do in order to help push your solutions to the markets so that the markets can adopt these solutions so much faster? If there’s all this waste that’s going on, obviously, this needs to be a hot topic, and it is. But governments obviously can do more. So what can they do in order to make your initiatives happen a lot faster?

Sumir Karayi: That’s a very interesting question. We’ve been in this space for ten years. I believe the governments are fairly late in this space. A lot of energy is being wasted, and the governments are waking up to it though. And they’re waking up to it in a very positive manner. What most governments have done is identifying and telling people about the waste there is. But we need policy. We need legislation because goodwill only goes so far. The great thing is today we’ve got a solution that provides real ROI. What the governments really need to do is think about not an individualization of cost. We’ve never even asked for that. But what the government should be saying is let’s make sure that every organization today can identify where it’s wasting energy. That’s just got to be number one. Let’s measure at least how much energy is being wasted. And then over time, bring in measures that actually decrease this waste. The problem is there are very few solutions like ours today that actually measure in a simple matter how much energy is being wasted. All we can do with most solutions is look at how busy servers are, how busy desktops are. Not whether they’re doing something useful. So one of the key things that we’re trying to do is really get into the mindset discussions with governments but also organizations such as The Green Grid where we talk about efficiency as a measure rather than just consumption and efficiency as a measure in terms of usefulness to the organization. And I really believe the governments can have a massive impact just by bringing measurement in today.

Ben Lack: So this is the final question, and this is more of a personal question than really more of a business question. I curious to know why you do what you do everyday.

Sumir Karayi: Well, I think that’s a great question. I’m highly motivated in this space. My wife and me, my then partner-now-wife, started the recycling program at university. And that was, let’s just say, it’s more than twenty years ago. We’ve always been involved in green programs, in recycling, and just ensuring that our impact on the environment is always minimal. And so I feel very strongly about this. It’s great that 1E can make such a big difference. We’re making a huge difference. And our contribution today is really massive. Three hundred and sixty million dollars we have saved in energy costs alone for our clients, of course, makes a real impact.

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