Cisco announces Smart Connected Buildings
ConvergenceAsia staff
02/07/2009

Cisco has announced Smart Connected Buildings as its latest emerging technology, a key component in delivering on its vision for Smart+Connected Communities, one of 30 key market adjacencies the company has identified.

Smart+Connected Communities addresses the growing need for sustainable energy to meet the demand of increasingly urbanised populations by providing a network-enabled blueprint for successful smart cities of the future that run on networked information. The solution builds on Cisco's networked sustainability platform to further utilise the network to increase energy efficiency, create new tools for 'energy-aware' city management, and enable economic opportunity and quality of life gains for citizens.

As a key component of delivering on the Smart+Connected Communities vision, Cisco has announced the availability of the Cisco Network Building Mediator, a Smart Connected Buildings solution that provides the intelligence to interconnect and enable building systems such as heating, ventilation and cooling (HVAC), lighting, electrical, security, and renewables over the IP network to build smart and energy-efficient buildings of the future. This provides operators and owners of these buildings with new ways of managing how energy is used based on policies that make sense for occupants.

Over the next three to five years, as more people around the world migrate to urban centres, 3 billion individuals around the world will connect to the Internet. Cisco envisages a future where successful communities and cities will run on networked information, and where information technology will help the world better manage its energy and environmental challenges, said Wim Elfrink, chief globalisation officer and executive vice president, Cisco Services.

"Cities of the future, and many innovative cities now, are addressing the issues and opportunities of this new world by thinking about the network as the platform for economic development, better city management and an improved quality of life for citizens. Everything connected to the network in these smart+connected communities can be greener." he said.

As the majority of electricity is consumed in offices and commercial buildings, Cisco believes the network has the potential to create a significant impact on global energy efficiency and reduction of Green House Gas emissions by further integrating information technology into Smart Connected Buildings. By continuing to extend our networked sustainability platform, Cisco will help accelerate energy innovations over IP from energy generation across the grid to commercial buildings and all the way to the home.

The new Smart Connected Buildings solution, Cisco's latest emerging technology, represents the first Emerging Technology business unit incubated from Cisco's Globalisation Centre East in Bangalore, India. The business unit integrates technologies from Cisco's acquisition of Santa Barbara, California-based Richards-Zeta in January 2009 with Cisco networking technology and concurrently develops innovative software solutions for energy management.

Smart Connected Buildings first solution, Cisco Network Building Mediator, provides an extensible architecture to allow building operation managers to easily monitor, measure and act on energy systems while adding renewable technologies such as solar, wind and fuel cells as well as energy-efficiency programmes such automated demand-response programmes to reduce capital and operating expenditures.

Cisco has also announced that more than 20 technology partners will join the Cisco Development Technology Programme for the Mediator in bringing solutions and services to Smart+Connected Communities.

In addition, Cisco plans to introduce an Authorised Technology Provider Programme for channel partners and system integrators who will be supporting sales and services for customers.

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