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Green bits and bytes for Dec 16 2010

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Green bits & bytes

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Some of the Green announcements which passed by my desk this week:

  1. We have written previously about the savings made possible by rolling out Digital Lumens Intelligent Lighting System (ILS) in a high-bay environment – well they have done it again! Their latest sale is to United States Cold Storage Inc., who deployed the ILS in its Hazelton Pa facility.

    USCS installed the lighting system in their recently built, 88,000-square-foot addition, and they can now light their facility for 3.5? per square foot per year, compared to 46? per square foot with traditional alternatives. USCS expects a return on investment of 14.6 months.

  2. SAP and PlaNet Finance’s joint project to help improve the incomes and living conditions for rural Ghanian women engaged in the Shea nut harvesting and Shea nut butter business posted a nice piece of good news during the week. Stanford University published a case study [PDF] which uncovered significant improvements in nut and butter quality. It also mentions how the women involved have organised into a network so they have a stronger negotiating position and they are achieving higher prices for their produce.
  3. JouleX is a company which helps organisations to monitor, analyse and manage the energy use and waste of IT systems connected to its internal network. JouleX announced this week that its JouleX Energy Manager (JEM) software has been accepted into the Cisco EnergyWise partner program – this enables Cisco to offer JEM as an energy management solution to its customers.
  4. Viridity, a data centre energy resource management software solution provider announced the appointment of Arun Oberoi to the position of President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), effective immediately.
  5. According to a news release from Tropos Networks, Silicon Valley Power (SVP), the City of Santa Clara?s municipal electric utility, has selected Tropos? GridCom as the distribution area communications network for its smart grid program, SVP Meter Connect. SVP serves over 50,000 customers and it expects the SVP Meter Connect project to increase reliability of the utility?s distribution system and finally
  6. ERP software company Epicor announced [PDF] the release of their on-demand carbon accounting solution, Carbon Connect. Carbon Connect is a SaaS delivered carbon accounting solution which allows companies to identify, analyze, audit, track, manage, benchmark and report on their carbon emissions /environmental impact and energy consumption.

Photo credit .faramarz

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Cisco EnergyWise – turns networks into an Energy Efficiency platforms

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As mentioned previously, buildings account for 38% of CO2 emissions in the United States, buildings consume 70% of the electricity load in the U.S and CO2 emissions from buildings are projected to grow faster than any other sector over the next 25 years.

Cisco has decided to tackle this problem, by turning its networking infrastructure kit into a platform for energy efficiency with its launch yesterday of Cisco EnergyWise!

Cisco EnergyWise is a technology for their Catalyst line of Switches which will be rolled out as a free software upgrade for existing switches and included in new Catalyst switches beginning in February 2009.

From the release:

Cisco EnergyWise will roll out in three phases to improve IT and building system energy utilization:

  • · In the first phase (February 2009), Network Control, Cisco EnergyWise will be supported on Catalyst switches and manage the energy consumption of IP devices such as phones, video surveillance cameras and wireless access points.
  • · In the next phase (Summer 2009), IT Control, there will be expanded industry support of EnergyWise on devices such as personal computers (PCs), laptops and printers.
  • · In the final phase (Early 2010), Building Control, Cisco EnergyWise will be extended to the management of building system assets such as heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), elevators, lights, employee badge access systems, fire alarm systems and security systems

EnergyWise will allow companies to create event-based policies for energy reduction (i.e. turn off all lights in data center or hotel room unless someone swipes in – and turn off when they swipe out). It will also allow for control of the energy utilisation of everything from wireless access points, right the way up to building’s aircon systems. Policies can be grouped by tags, so you can control entire buildings campuses or geographies.

Cisco also announced the acquisition of Richards-Zeta Building Intelligence Inc. to get access to the intelligent middleware to provide interoperability and integration between building infrastructure, IT applications and Cisco EnergyWise.

EnergyWise will also enable companies to report aggregated power consumption across an organisation, provide reports of current power conditions and suggests potential changes thereby reducing energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

Demand response programs will benefit hugely from systems like this being in place.

Superb to see RedMonk client company SolarWinds being signed up as the first network management partner for the program. SolarWinds told me they hope to have the integration with Cisco EnergyWise complete in 2009 and they told me that:

  • · EnergyWise policies and configurations will be managed by Orion Network Configuration Manager (NCM).
  • · Orion Network Performance Monitor (NPM) will show EnergyWise statistics and reports in its familiar web-based dashboard.
  • · We will also establish EnergyWise forums in thwack, to help support users as they roll out EnergyWise in their corporate environments.

Now, how long will it be before Juniper come out with a competitive offering, do you think? The more companies thinking this way and turning out products like this, the better for everyone.