Industry alliances are not new.
It was back in August last year that IBM announced the formation of Green Sigma, a consulting practice it first mooted back in October 2007. Now, within a year IBM has formed a cross industry alliance of metering, monitoring, automation, data communications and software providers.
The list is as broad as it is impressive. Johnson Controls, Honeywell Building Solutions, ABB, Eaton, ESS, Cisco, Siemens Building Technologies Division, Schneider Electric and SAP.
"The coalition members will work with IBM to integrate their products and services with IBM's Green Sigma solution," it said.
IBM and Cisco have integrated IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Energy Management and Cisco EnergyWise energy management solution. "The new combined solution broadens the range of power consumption information and energy optimization policies that can be managed by IBM Energy Management solutions to help organizations discover, optimize, and report energy usage within their data center and business infrastructure," a statement said.
IBM and Honeywell will integrate Tivoli Monitoring for Energy Management with Honeywell's EBI and Tridium offerings.
Francis J. Murray Jr., President and CEO of the New York State Energy and Development Authority (NYSERDA), said: "We are proud to continue that partnership with IBM and the Green Sigma Coalition as it designs effective energy efficiency and carbon reduction strategies for New York's manufacturers, data centers and other businesses. As we develop statewide energy strategies, we see the problems and bottlenecks created by stand-alone solutions and disparate systems that cannot share information. We applaud IBM's approach of sharing expertise and technology through industry collaboration with IBM's Green Sigma Coalition and other public/private partnerships. The coalition's goal of providing customers with a unified view of their energy, water, waste and greenhouse gas emissions to enable overall efficiency and reduce environmental impact represents a significant advancement in the market. NYSERDA has a longstanding partnership with IBM. Together, we have invested over $15 Million for energy efficiency improvements to IBM's New York facilities."

"As we all work toward creating a greener, smarter planet, it is plain that none of us can get there alone," said Rich Lechner, IBM's vice president for energy and environment. "Through public and private partnerships, and with leaders across a range of industries and technologies combining and sharing our expertise and talent, we can create the solutions the world needs to conserve resources and address climate change."

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Green Sigma is based on Lean Six Sigma, a business strategy for analyzing operations to improve overall efficiency, lower costs, increase quality, and add, change or eliminate activities and processes to improve overall performance.