Cisco is pushing its EnergyWise technology in an effort to make the network the platform for monitoring the use of energy within buildings.

The company said it will roll out Cisco EnergyWise in three phases to improve IT and building system energy utilization. The company is working with Schneider Electric for building utility management, SolarWinds for network monitoring, and Verdiem for monitoring PC power in order to extend EnergyWise as a platform for power management across IT and the building systems of an organization by early 2010.

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.

"As a global specialist in energy management, we help our customers to make the most of their energy," said Jean-Pascal Tricoire, CEO of Schneider Electric. "Today, through the monitoring and control of energy usage with energy efficiency products, Schneider Electric's solutions deliver up to 30 percent energy savings to residential, commercial and industrial buildings. Using the network as a platform through Cisco EnergyWise, we will be able to bring additional reductions in energy consumption, offering our customers an efficient, simple, and reliable infrastructure."

Cisco EnergyWise provides real-time, granular measurement capabilities to give chief information officers better visibility into energy savings across an entire organization as well as specific places in the network such as the campus, branch office and data center.

 "Cisco believes that information technology has the power to transform the way the world manages its environmental and energy challenges. With EnergyWise, Cisco is uniquely positioned to help our customers gain a networkwide view of energy consumption that encompasses not only device-level power, but in the future entire network efficiency, building operations and business practices across an entire organization," said Judy Lin, senior vice president of the Ethernet Switching technology group for Cisco.

"With the organizationwide visibility that Cisco EnergyWise provides, we anticipate potential annual reduced energy savings of 15 to 20 percent conservatively across our portfolio of commercial office buildings. This could equate to energy savings of 19 to 33 cents a square foot, which over the course of a year could be thousands of dollars in energy related savings," said Jeff Ton, vice president of IT for Lauth Property Group. Cisco EnergyWise supports currently deployed Catalyst switches worldwide with a free software upgrade and new Catalyst switches beginning in February 2009.

The EnergyWise demo is here