Cisco Systems announced in a press release on Tuesday the launch of a three-stage plan to help IT businesses reduce their carbon emissions, through the use of their new EnergyWise technology.
Primarily designed for Cisco"s Catalyst switches, EnergyWise reports and reduces the energy consumption of devices such as mobile phones, laptops and wireless access points.
In the press release, Judy Lin, senior vice president of the Ethernet Switching technology group for Cisco said, "With EnergyWise, Cisco is uniquely positioned to help our customers gain a network wide 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."
The first stage of the plan, to be launched in February, will see Cisco Catalyst switches receive a free software upgrade that will make it possible for businesses to monitor and control the energy consumption of any devices connected to the network, by automatically turning off or reducing power to them when they are idle.
The next phase, due in the summer, will see support of EnergyWise expanded across the industry, to include devices such as PCs, laptops and printers.
For the final phase, in conjunction with Schneider Electric, EnergyWise will be extended to include the management of building systems, such as heating, ventilation, air conditioning, elevators and lights, as well as access, fire and security systems. This final stage is expected to begin in early 2010.
Jeff Ton, vice president of IT for Lauth Property Group, believes that the use of EnergyWise could lead to annual energy savings of 15 to 20 percent across their 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," he said.