LAS VEGAS —Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management, announced at Cisco’s annual IT and communications conference that it has teamed with Cisco to provide a comprehensive energy management solution that monitors and manages energy consumption across all building domains including IT. According to the companies, with this combined solution, building owners and managers, architects, contractors, and IT managers will now be able to optimize energy efficiencies and business operations to save energy.

Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure™ active energy management architecture portfolio is said to offer a single point of access that connects five domains of business expertise — power, data centers, process and machines, building control, and physical security — all within an open and flexible technology framework. The EcoStruxure architecture integrates with Cisco EnergyWise™ embedded on the Cisco network infrastructure to provide a holistic building management solution, managing all energy-consuming building assets, such as HVAC, lighting, security and, for the first time, reducing energy waste generated from IT/IP assets, including PCs, phones, Catalyst switches, Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) endpoint devices, and other IT devices.

“Looking for innovative ways to increase energy efficiency and enable business performance within buildings is what Schneider Electric does every day with thousands of customers worldwide,”said Chris Curtis, president and CEO, Buildings Business, Schneider Electric. “Combining Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure architecture and Cisco EnergyWise provides organizations with the capability to go one step further and manage the energy consumption of IT/IP devices and PCs in the building management system domain for the first time. We are very excited about this opportunity and what our joint innovation will mean for reducing energy consumption in buildings across the globe.”

For example, Schneider Electric and Cisco noted that two schools in Europe implemented the combined solution in a pilot project and are currently saving approximately 30 percent of their IT energy, resulting in an overall reduction of close to 6 percent of their overall energy spend. Delivering a quick, measurable return on investment (ROI), said the companies, the combined solution provides users with the ability to reduce overall IT operating costs by up to 30 percent and overall building costs by close to 9 percent.

In addition, the new combined solution is said to enable organizations to: 

• Monitor, report, and manage energy usage across the entire corporate network or real estate infrastructure;

• Create a more energy-efficient architecture for the IP/IT domain outside of the data center;

• Better control where and how energy is being used to more intelligently and efficiently respond to smart grid signals; and

• Realize a new source of energy savings to fulfill corporate sustainability requirements, free up capital resources, and quickly improve an organization’s overall bottom line.

“Cisco EnergyWise is the leading solution in the industry that allows customers to monitor and control the power of their networking equipment and end devices connected to Cisco switches and routers,” said Jeff Reed, vice president of Cisco’s Unified Access Business Unit. “By working with industry leading companies like Schneider Electric, we are providing building owners and managers the ability to monitor, report, and control their buildings’ entire energy usage, including IT infrastructure, through a single pane of glass resulting in greater operational efficiency and higher savings.”

For more information on Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure active energy management architecture, visit www2.schneider-electric.com/sites/corporate/en/solutions/ecostruxure/ecostruxure-videos.page.

Publication date:08/08/2011