Compliance makes Diodes greener and cleaner

Carbon credit to Certero!

A software license audit sounds dull, but there's money and personal glory at stake

Semi conductor manufacturer Diodes asked asset management experts Certero to tighten up its software licence management. An unexpected bonus was that it slashed its client’s carbon footprint and power emissions.

Diodes makes application-specific products for consumer electronics, ICT, industrial and automotive markets around the world.
It has spent the last ten years working to gain full software licence compliance.
“We have a large IT estate so our systems need to conform to constantly changing legislation,” says Paul Baxendale, Diodes’ european IT group manager. ”Having an awareness of every licence can be problematic, so we wanted to reduce the risk of non-compliance.”
After a 30 day trial, Diodes bought AssetStudio to monitor and manage licence agreements, entitlements, purchase information and physical assets, all through a centralised repository.
“AssetStudio managed our licences and help reduce the risk of legal and financial exposure,” says Baxendale. “It also highlighted the amount of unused licences we had.”
At that time, Certero was developing PowerStudio so Diodes took part in Certero’s beta testing programme. PowerStudio identifies daily, monthly and annual trends of computer power usage by PCs and thin clients. The reports helped Diodes set centralised power policies in accordance with user activity, such as powering off PCs at night. This made computer equipment last longer and cut power consumption.
Which helped it meet environmental computing targets.
In eight weeks across a sub-set of PCs, it has achieved a twenty per cent power saving.