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A county council could slash its annual energy bill by £40,000 thanks to a computer programme developed by one of its staff

Peter Kear, an IT support team leader for Staffordshire County Council, has invented a patch management programme that automatically scans the authority’s 7,500 computers and switches off those that have been left on overnight.

A major difference to many other systems is that the programme closes down computers completely rather than just leaving them in hibernation mode, said a council spokesperson. The system kicks in at 8pm every night and switches off at 8am the following morning.

Kear said: “We already have software that scans every county council computer when they are switched off to ensure they have the latest anti-virus protection installed. This technology already realises whether a PC is on or off, so it was then a matter of writing a programme that went a step further and switched off machines that didn’t need to be on during the night.”

The programme should be installed across the county by September and estimates suggest that it could save around 40,000 each year. The council also believes that other authorities and industry could adapt the programme to create further savings.

Very cool, not only is the tool managing the infrastructure from a patch management standpoint, it’s been enhanced to help reduce energy costs by switching the pcs off overnight. This not only saves on direct energy costs, it should help with maintenance and support, rebooting the pc will reduce the number of fault calls either as a result of hardware or software, and with the patch management, rebooting the pc and then patching it should further enhance your patching exercises success.

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