1E

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.[2][3][4] Karayi is now the CEO, Blackburn is the CIO, whilst Wilcock has left the company.[2] The company has more than 30 million licenses deployed worldwide, across 1,700 organizations from public and private sectors in 42 countries.^{[citation needed]}

The company's name is derived from a computer error. When some Microsoft Windows computers crash, a blue screen containing "STOP 0x0000001E" appears.[2] This name was chosen because the founders had the ambition that 1E could prevent this from happening to big companies.[4]

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.[5][6][7][8]

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.[9]

In 2016 1E released the Software Usage and Waste Report 2016, which discovered that 38% of enterprise software was going to waste, equating to billions of dollars in waste.