In this episode, Dan Ellis, founder of PCPowerSave, discusses the inspiration behind his SaaS application designed to reduce energy consumption on computer systems. He details the challenges it addresses, particularly amid rising electricity costs in Europe. Dan outlines how his software surpasses standard power settings by providing detailed reports and automated optimisations, enabling significant cost and environmental savings for businesses. The conversation also touches on market strategies, operational details, and the product’s adoption among MSPs and enterprises, highlighting future plans for scaling and collaborations.
00:00 Introduction and Icebreaker
00:33 The Energy Consumption Challenge
01:15 How the Software Works
01:49 Optimising Power Settings
02:50 Reporting and Additional Features
04:26 Target Market and Pricing
06:11 Energy Savings and Use Cases
12:17 Environmental Impact and Business Values
18:49 Scaling the Business
24:00 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
Connect with Dan Ellis on LinkedIn by clicking here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/djwellis/
Connect with Daniel Welling on LinkedIn by clicking here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-welling-54659715/
Connect with Adam Morris on LinkedIn by clicking here – linkedin.com/in/adamcmorris
Visit The MSP Finance Team website, simply click here – https://www.mspfinanceteam.com/
We look forward to catching up with you on the next one. Stay tuned!
Transcript;
Dan Welling: So, my first question is, are you a Dan or a Daniel?
Dan Ellis: actually Dan. I think both of us are Dans, right?
Dan Welling: Well, I’m often asked and my standard reply is, I’ve been called a lot worse. So whatever you are happy with, but, but yeah, I’m sometimes a Dan, sometimes a Daniel, especially when I’ve been, you know,
Adam: sometimes a Danielle, is that right? We can.
Dan Welling: Daniel at the weekend. Yes.
Dan Ellis: I think we’re both similarly indifferent to how people name us. But yes, Dan is fine, good sir.
Dan Welling: Brilliant. Good stuff. So Dan,we met three, four months ago at an event and,I was really intrigued to hear what, what your side hustle,from the MSP is and equally surprised actually that There was a need at all. So perhaps you could just tell us a little bit about what you’re doing and what the challenge is that that you’re resolving.
Dan Ellis: Certainly, yeah. I’ll start with a challenge first. It’s always best to start there. Which is, most computer systems, if not all, run on electricity. And electricity costs money, and in Europe alone, since 2023, the price of electricity has gone up around eight times. You’ve, we’ve all been experiencing that joy.
Dan Ellis: And A piece of software, a widget I made years ago, suddenly became relevant again to reduce energy consumption on computer systems. So, to try and, to stop the bleeding associated with energy costs on computers. So, the widget, it’s a SAS application, installs on a machine, monitors to see how much energy it’s using, if it’s being inefficient, if you’ve got too much running in the background.
Dan Ellis: And, then it optimizes your machine to reduce the cost of it. That’s where it all fits. That’s how it all, that’s what it’s for.
Dan Welling: Andwhat, I guess the thing that, that I was most surprised about when you described that to me before was I thought this was like part of standard, like you have in windows settings, you have, you can adjust, optimize for like, for example, battery use or powers power saving.
Dan Welling: So this presumably is going a step beyond what you can do natively in windows or with the hardware manufacturer’s toolset.
Dan Ellis: Precisely. Absolutely. Precisely. When I first started developing this, I worried about that question coming up. But the more I worked on it, the more we developed it, the less relevant it became. Computer systems, they do come with Microsoft power settings, Windows power settings. And that does help. So, it’s not like Microsoft haven’t set us up for success.
Dan Ellis: But a lot of businesses, they don’t bother tweaking it. And a lot of MSPs They don’t exactly make it part of their standard setup to go in and optimize things. And what’s more, if they chose to do that, there’s no margin in it, no profitability in it. And that’s, I mean, it’s an interesting place to start, but the features that were bolted on afterwards, in our product solve problems that there are not currently solutions for, like for example, one of the.
Dan Ellis: One of the major ones is the reporting element. The software sits on the machine, and it will automatically optimize how your computer uses power, and then it will explain how much it’s saved you. It will explain how inefficient a user is or isn’t being. It’ll explain whether you’ve got the wrong kit for the job.
Dan Ellis: Microsoft Power Settings don’t do that. at the end of the day, it’ll generate you a report saying here’s how many kilowatt hours of energy you’ve used this month per machine. Here’s how much CO2 you’ve used. Here’s how much money it’s cost you, which Microsoft doesn’t do. there are a few more simple fundamental settings, like, there’s an automated shutdown function, which, I remember you could use ps tools, ps exec, ps shutdown, if any of you remember that application, to shut down a machine.
Dan Ellis: Doesn’t give the user any say in the matter. Your machine’s shutting down, mate. The software, it’ll pop up just like Netflix does at the end of the day. And it’ll say, excuse me,you still working? You still busy? And if you don’t press yes within 30, 40 minutes, however long you set it, it’ll hibernate your machine.
Dan Ellis: And these are all things that don’t exist in standard power settings. So I’ve taken some of the standard Microsoft settings and improved them, and enhanced the features, and turned it into something an MSP can generate revenue out of, and a customer, and can generate environmental reports out of as well. winded answer, I’m sorry.
Adam: Yeah. and is there a kind of entry level size of end user for this to become worthwhile?
Dan Ellis: Yeah, I think so. I, when we first launched it, friends and family were testing it. And it worked. It saved money on a per computer basis. It’s a strange situation. If you’ve got a 2 or 3 computer business, it’s not really worth the MSP selling it, because it’s such an inexpensive product. We’re charging like a pound, and you’re going to resell it for 1.
Dan Ellis: 2. 50 per month.
Adam: a pound a month.
Dan Ellis: yeah, that’s what, that’s why I’m charging the MSPs a pound a month. So if you as an MSP are selling this for 2, 2. 50, or you’re giving it free with this stack, then it’s not exactly worth it to you for two to five computer networks. it’s just not much. It can actually save an individual quite a decent amount of money because individuals have far more powerful computers than they need to.
Dan Ellis: That’s not what we’ve built it for. The best use case for this is 15 to 20 users and up. That’s when a business might start to care. Once you’ve got a hundred users plus a business will most certainly start to care.
Adam: Yeah. So I imagine. at that larger scale,the FD is becoming far more interested in this, and just take me through what those numbers could look like for a hundred user, a hundred seat organization. you know, where they’re mainly, well, I guess they could be working from home as well.
Adam: I guess that’s a different, that’s a different discussion perhaps, but let’s just say they’re office based for now and what impact does this make on their utility bills?
Dan Ellis: certainly. so this is where it gets. I’ll give you the simple version, but it can get as complicated as you want it to be. You’ve got different computers running different software with different amounts of time they’re idle, or different user activity, whether they’ll leave it on in the evenings or not, or over the weekend.
Dan Ellis: Some people have fancy graphics cards, some don’t. The way the software actually works is it will run all the reports and give you the estimates before you make the sales pitch to the customer. I should clarify that because it can be so variable. But, I’ll give you a use case on a computer system, let’s say it draws 200 watts.
Dan Ellis: So, a 200 watt machine. Left on for, let’s say, 150, 100 hours a week. 100 hours a week, so that’s about 4 to 5 days. that’s 20 kilowatt hours, and at the current price of electricity at 7 pounds. 7 pounds per week, 4 weeks a month.approximately 4 weeks a month. That’s about 28 to 30 pounds per computer per month that you’ll spend running a machine.
Dan Ellis: And, well, that’s it. If you are familiar with the Microsoft Azure pricing calculators, anyone who’s commissioned a server on Azure will know that 730, I think it is, 730 hours in a given month, but you only actually need about 200 hours of actual use in that month. So, using the Azure model as a calculator, you can take the price of electricity of a machine, so let’s say it’s 20 to 30 pounds per computer per month, and divide that by approximately 4.
Dan Ellis: So, we can take energy consumption of an inefficient machine and reduce it to 25 percent of what it originally was costing. So, a business with 100 computers, each costing 20, so they’re spending 2, 000 a month, we think we can get that down to around 500. So, that’s a pretty decent saving. with one of our customers, we had an 80 computer network, and we reduced their energy by 500 a month within the first month of switching it on.
Dan Ellis: And that was a nice extreme example. There are some cases where, People are very efficient with how they use their machine. They’ve got nice modern machines that are, you know, solid state. There are these little micro PCs, some on laptops, and they’re only on for two hours a day. You won’t save that company hardly anything.
Dan Ellis: you’ll, they’ll save just a smidge more than you’re charging them. In the, in that instance, the use case and the pitch is very much a we will guarantee your business is energy efficient. We won’t save you money, but we’ll guarantee you are as energy efficient as you can possibly be. Now, I hope that’s okay for another long winded answer to a short question.
Adam: no, that’s perfect. Thank you.
Dan Welling: Absolutely, and the, there’s a few things that caught my attention there that the first is, I don’t think I’ve ever actually, worked out the energy cost of, of running a machine, you know, a user in a month. And isn’t it interesting that,we did a recent, article on what MSPs, do, should, and could be charging in terms of a managed service price.
Dan Welling: And, and we sort of discovered that the sort of very entry level probably is around the 20 pounds a user a month mark, which,we wouldn’t advocate as being appropriate or sustainable if you want to run a profitable business, but,isn’t it interesting that,you’re going to, you’re going to pay 20, 30 pounds on, on energy alone to compare that against, you know, what you would pay for a managed service.
Dan Ellis: so, so I think that in itself is an interesting, comparison number when MSPs are talking to end users about. What it actually costs them to have I. T. I must confess if it’s, we recently had a dilemma with a customer. They were trying to debate on prem versus cloud. Now, most customers move to the cloud anyway. This particular one was just a little uncertain. So we worked it out. Their overpowered server running at half a kilowatt 24 7 for an entire month was costing them 133 a month in electricity alone.
Dan Ellis: Which was more than enough to justify the difference between on prem versus cloud. some years back we got someone to move to a, this is a long time ago now, a thin client based environment, where each device was drawing 20 watts instead of 200. And on the energy price alone, it was about 12, 13 years ago, they made the decision.
Dan Ellis: Because these machines were more efficient than the traditional way. And if companies start considering this, they might find there are some doors that can be opened. we’ve done, you know, SSD upgrades, you do that because it’s faster. But you can also do it because it’s significantly cheaper to run.
Dan Ellis: And, the reason why we’ve got the software that gives you the estimate first, is you go to a QBR with a customer and you tell them something they’ve never even thought of, which is, did you know how much your computers are costing you in energy? versus how much they could be costing you in energy.
Dan Ellis: Suddenly you’ve got a sales pitch for a product that the customer didn’t even consider, but now it’ll pay for itself. And it’s a much easier sell, you’re sort of pushing it at open door, and you’re not competing with any other products on the market. It’s something that they haven’t even thought of, and there’s very little objection to it either.
Dan Welling: and that’s before you get into the actually, it’s a good thing to do to be saving energy. you know, the environmental,value. And,and so, but yeah, it’s so much easier if you’ve got a hard,cost benefit,to demonstrate, as you say, pushing an open door and, and it’s budget that, that they didn’t know they were spending necessarily.
Dan Welling: it’s not obvious, to, to, to them because the cost is wrapped up in their overall energy. So, so yeah, as I say, a really interesting topic. we touched on the environmental impact there. in, in your experience thus far,how much. How much has that been relevant to the MSPs and to their customers?
Dan Welling: howyour sense of, are they doing it really for the environment or is it purely to save money
Dan Ellis: Right, well, okay, so, I am, I’m a bit of an environmental eco nerd. you know, I’ve got my electric car, and I’m, I, as part of my VCIO duties, I advise some hydro companies. So I’m all about the, I’m all about the green. But I’m well aware that most companies don’t care. They’ll say they do. But what they’re ma Maybe they will even care.
Dan Ellis: But what they’re really focused on when it comes to making a decision is that sounds expensive. getting the recycle bins an extra 25 a month. let’s just stick with the standard one. You’re dealing with that kind of situation sometimes. The companies that really care about the environment will try and do something about this.
Dan Ellis: But, The companies that are interested in the money side, they will also find this product appealing. So, something that may blow your mind is one customer we were dealing with recently I went in, and I gave them the whole pitch on energy saving. I said, this is how much you’re using, this is how much it’ll save you.
Dan Ellis: And they said, yeah, we don’t care about that, we’re just getting it for PR. Or, it’s the values of the company. I think, well, but I can save you all this money. And they say, well, yes, we will also save money. We’re doing it because it’s what matches our company values and it’s what will go in the press release.
Dan Ellis: So, it was the opposite way round to what you’re describing actually. They were more interested in doing the right thing because it was good optics for the company. and it fitted in with their values.
Adam: I know that completely makes sense. and it’s interesting that the product obviously, you know, approaches the market, those two different angles, just get back to that pricing. how much are you seeing MSP selling this for? what’s the kind of range that you’re seeing out there?
Dan Ellis: Well, I think an MSP will be wanting to make their 50%. I’m anticipating they’ll sell it for around two pounds. However. We haven’t had it happen yet, but I’m thinking it will only be a matter of time before a company decides to just bundle it as a differentiator. But I’m expecting they’ll charge 2, or if they’re feeling a bit bold, they might charge 2.
Dan Ellis: 50, if the report shows that they can make a significant enough saving. And to answer a question that’s probably on your minds, if they’re selling to a company that’s 100 percent work from home laptop users, you won’t save that much energy, and the company’s not paying the energy bill. Those are the sort of companies where it’ll be an employee perk rather than anything, so it’ll have to be sold as that, and you won’t charge 2.
Dan Ellis: 50, you’ll be charging you 1. 50 to 2, I
Adam: Sure. and, to what extent have you looked at the, the other route to market around the energy, I don’t know what they’re called, but the energy brokers, you know, those guys that go around businesses and they look to charge a fee, but always save their client’s money. to what extent is that a route to market for you?
Dan Ellis: It absolutely is a route to market, it’s just, MSPs are where I sort of cut my teeth. So that’s why I’m starting there. But we have been dealing with a few energy brokers, trying to get some demos over the line. However, the problem that you’ll find is in a big business. The IT budget and the facilities budget have very different opinions to one another and whose budget does it come out of?
Dan Ellis: Does IT want to spend the money and save facilities budget? If you can get them to collaborate, and if you’re dealing at, exact level, then you’ll be fine. And these energy brokers, they can help if the IT department is willing to let them in.
Adam: Yeah, that makes sense.
Dan Ellis: That’s the, that’s, of all the issues we’ve had, that’s been the one that’s bugged me the most, is the cross departmental budget one.
Dan Welling: and, just going back to,the margin, perception of, You, you buy it for a pound and you sell it for two and therefore it’s 50 50%. But is there not a labor overhead to consider here as well as the actual product cost?
Dan Ellis: Yeah, so, we’ve tried to make it as easy as possible. But you’ll still need some labor to set it up the way it works. I’ll try not to go too in depth with it, but you roll it out through a single command through your RMM and now it’s installed and it’s, monitoring hardware specs, software, CPU usage, et cetera, et cetera.
Dan Ellis: It will then appear in the control panel on the website, and it will say. This company here, these 50 machines, are drawing this much power. It takes an hour or two to do all of its analysis the first time. So, generally, you install it, you roll it out en masse on day one, and then a day or two later, you go back to the control panel and you print out the report.
Dan Ellis: And then if the company, if the customer wants to buy it, if they make the decision to purchase, Then you go back into the control panel and you click the on switch and start saving them some money. You can spend 5 10 minutes, playing with the settings if you want to. there are a few options in there to, you know, about how impactful do you want the software to be.
Dan Ellis: There’s always impact versus inconvenience. No one wants to have their computer auto hibernate every 5 minutes.so, there’s about 5 10 minutes worth of config, and then you roll it out. And then it should just form part of the QBR process, where you just press the button to print out the report, and you take it to the customer every quarter.
Dan Ellis: So, to roll it out for a hundred user network, took me an hour or two. If you want to give them a more customized experience, that can be charged as a premium. And, we’ve, we’ve had experience with one customer where they wanted the setup and they wanted three years worth of licensing because there was a 50 percent government grant that they could use against the whole lot.
Dan Ellis: So that’s quite nice. So sometimes the labor is a little bit worth it. If you want to really tweak it, if you’re lazy though, you can do it in an hour or two, if you really want to get granular.
Dan Welling: And in terms of the setup,we’d be suggesting that is a, that’s a paid overhead. Pay project, it’s a move and an add or change. So therefore the installation should be charged separately, but it sounds like the ongoing management is, is very light. It, and if anything is maybe more a commercial, source of information than the necessarily going through the service desk and, and that, and therefore part of the cost of the, of delivering the service.
Dan Welling: so, Okay. I mean, so far we’ve got a pretty compelling,pretty compelling product and business model. so my next question is, well, what, why isn’t this sort of flying off the shelf? Well, is it, and, and,I’d be interested to, to learn a little bit about, your, your journey of establishing a vendor product business, growing from the MSP, knowledge that you have.
Dan Welling: And, I also, before we run out of time and maybe you can fold this into it to tell us a little bit about the,the PIDGET program. cause we had, we had a recent episode with,with,Dan and Sean and,and,Mark,talk, talking about PIDGET program. So it was really interested to, to see you’re involved in that as well.
Dan Ellis: yeah. I’ve loved the picture program’s been fantastic. I tried to enter last year and if you ever talk to Sean Lardo about this, he’ll tell you the amusing story of me missing the deadline by 10 days and then kicking myself for an entire year. but the experience of going from MSP to the other side of the desk, to vendor feels I should be all cautious being a vendor, but it’s.
Dan Ellis: It’s been quite nice. Because we know quite a lot of MSPs, part of my job in my MSP when I’m, when I am working on it, it’s to meet other MSPs, share ideas, collaborate, and see what we can learn from one another. So, you know, we do the IT Nation Evolve events. we’re in, we do the Tech Tribe events.
Dan Ellis: I’m in Network Group here in the UK, and I try to get to whatever I can to learn.you can see us at CompTIA in London later this year. So for example, CompTIA, I like them. So speaking to all of these MSPs, we’ve got a lot of friends, I would say. And as such, so far, it hasn’t been too tricky, getting this demonstrated and used and some people doing some sales pitches to their customers either.
Dan Ellis: And within my own MSP, which has definitely been a great springboard, when we’ve been pitching this to prospects, to our existing customer base, we get there about half the time. The main reasons we haven’t so far has been a little bit of apathy. Or the network’s a bit too small, in some instances. And in some instances, it didn’t personally affect that user, that point of contact enough to justify it, which that can happen sometimes, but by and large, the feedback on it has been phenomenally brilliant.
Dan Ellis: we’ve had some nice pressure releases that we are going to be releasing soon about savings that we’ve done with our customers.
Dan Welling: 50 percent penetration in your own estate is, I’d say pretty good actually,as a, as an optional product. So, so yeah, no,really interesting. And, and so what does the future hold for you in terms of, how do you. How do you scale this beyond the, I guess, a lot of products do,sort of filter through the market through referrals and,and sort of organic development, but that’s maybe, well, you’re definitely not in control of that happening.
Dan Welling: You can stimulate it. But, so, do you have, do you have sort of a strategy in terms of how you’re going to pay, you’re going to scale this nationally, globally?
Dan Ellis: absolutely. Referral is going to be our best method to begin with. because selling in, as a vendor in the MSP space is a costly thing when you’re not, you know, VC backed, I think. So we’re starting with the people we know. We are giving them a very careful onboarding process where we talk them through not only how to use it, But how to best get the value for your customer.
Dan Ellis: So we’ll help them with the control panel. They’re still, we’re still at that company size where they’re getting one to one support from myself, from the programmer and from my business partner. So we’re all there to help people.but beyond that, it will be some of the events. I did mention CompTIA this year.
Dan Ellis: We were there last year exhibiting. There will be network group partnership at some point. I’m going to be working on that if they’ll have me. And, IT Nation is the next step, which we’ve already started doing through, the Pitchit competition. And I think that’s a good start for now. We have a few other markets we could go after.
Dan Ellis: I’m not planning to sell directly to home users. No way, but we have some enterprise conversations going on at the moment because enterprises are, they’re particularly interested in the optics in addition to the savings. So we can push forward on both angles there.
Dan Ellis: Absolutely. And still could be a channel focused, route to market for the enterprises through the vase. Yeah.
Dan Welling: as well as the MSPs covering perhaps the smaller mid market, maybe. so, well,
Dan Ellis: I’d prefer not to cut out anyone. I’d prefer just to go through VARs and MSPs if at all possible.
Dan Welling: Absolutely. And I’m sure,I’m sure Mr. Tulip is a regular listener to this podcast. So he’ll be, he’ll be preparing you a confirmation of, of order for your network group membership,as we speak,
Dan Ellis: Hello, Dave.
Dan Welling: so, so yeah, I mean, like I say, really interesting to hear about what you’re doing,genuinely it has opened my eyes to something that I didn’t realize was,was a need. And, and an opportunity, and,sounds really interesting. So, so I’m sure you’ll, I’m sure you’ll go on to be very successful with, with this.
Dan Welling: obviously we’ve, the whole episode has kind of been a bit of a,a shameless plug for you, but this is the time in the episode where we would say, and,here’s your opportunity for a shameless plug. So, if anyone wants to talk more about this,how best to get hold of
Dan Ellis: Yeah, well you can find me on LinkedIn as Daniel Ellis, or the company is PCPowerSave. com. And, discounts for Tech Tribe members.
Dan Welling: Brilliant. any, any final thoughts,from you, Adam?
Adam: well, I don’t think so. Actually it’s fairly straightforward, isn’t it? There’s a, you know, a relatively simple business case and,clearly there’s a good route to market here. So, I don’t see any reasons why you can’t go on and, you know, push this business forward and for it to be very successful.
Adam: And I wish you the best of luck.
Dan Ellis: Thank you both. That’s very wonderful of you to say. Thank you.
Dan Welling: Brilliant. And thanks for, thanks for joining us.
Dan Ellis: Thanks for having me.