1E

History

1E was founded in 1997 by three former Microsoft contractors, Sumir Karayi, Phil Wilcock, and Mark Blackburn, who each contributed £500 to start the company. Karayi is now CEO, Blackburn is CIO, whilst Wilcock has left the company. Today the company has more than 26 million licenses deployed worldwide, across 1,700 organizations in 42 countries. Its customers are drawn from public and private sectors across the world and include Dell, Arup, and Ford Motor Company.

The company's name is derived from a computer error. When some Microsoft Windows computers crash, a blue screen containing "STOP 0x0000001E" appears. This name was chosen because the founders had the ambition that 1E could prevent this from happening to big companies.

Products

1E is a Software Lifecycle Automation company. 1E offers a suite of IT software products, including:

NightWatchman a PC power management tool which manages power use for servers and PCs. Included with NightWatchman is WakeUp, a Wake-on-LAN product used to power on PCs remotely for software updating and patching.

Nomad is an add-on and enhancement to Microsoft System Centre Configuration Manager (SCCM) which intelligently uses available network bandwidth to deliver operating system upgrades, software deployments and patches.

Shopping is an app store for the enterprise, which replicates the user experience found with consumer app stores.

AppClarity is a Software Asset Management Suite. AppClarity Base consumes and normalizes inventory data to licensed product names and provides assessments of usage of those products. AppClarity Reclaim allows users to create policies to automate removal (reclaim) of software based on usage, version, etc. AppClarity Compliance enables customers to track licenses, entitlements, rights, limitations, metrics, contracts, etc. and understand their Compliance position. AppClarity License Demand packs provide accurate license demand calculations for complex metrics like Oracle Processor Licenses or MS SQL Core licenses by consuming inventory data.

Research

In 2009 1E and the Alliance to Save Energy commissioned independent research into the awareness and behavior of PC users and server administrators in the world's largest companies.

The PC Energy report revealed that nearly half of all corporate PCs in the US are not regularly switched off at night. This adds up to approximately 108 million work PCs being left switched on overnight costing US businesses in the region of $2.8 billion in energy costs. In terms of carbon emissions this equates to approximately 20 million tons, roughly the equivalent impact of 4 million cars.

In 2010 1E commissioned Vanson Bourne to conduct research into Help Desk Efficiency. The resulting report highlighted a number of challenges for IT departments. More than a third of users perceive little or no value from the money their IT department spends on them each year. More than 50% of users have to chase every request they make at least once to make sure they receive the software they ask for and more than two thirds (68%) of users feel it would be quicker and easier to find and install software themselves rather than contacting their IT help desk.

The Software Efficiency report published in 2011 with Fast IiS, Opinion Matters and IAITAM found extensive waste in unused software and shelfware, accounting for £1.7 billion in the UK alone. Responses found that 47% of enterprises still use spreadsheets to record software licenses with 6% still using a paper-based filing system and a staggering 16% using nothing whatsoever.

Awards

1E's software and solutions have won a number of awards, most recently when Lloyds Banking Group won the Computer Weekly European User Award for Enterprise Software – Private Sector, as well as the Green IT Awards 2013, and the Sunday Times Best Companies 2013 list.