| Rising energy costs, environmental concerns, and new legal requirements are driving the adoption of more energy-efficient and sustainable information technology, which is creating a number of new challenges. For example, IT managers must measure energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions across the organization to reduce the negative impact of business on the environment. They must manage the energy consumption of disparate networks and information technology resources within a single policy and set of rules. And in addition, IT managers must comply with local environmental regulations and meet environmental and social corporate responsibilities.
To address these challenges, Cisco has developed a new energy-saving technology — Cisco EnergyWise. This technology is built into Cisco switches and routers, helping customers measure, monitor, and reduce energy consumption across their entire enterprise infrastructure.
«EnergyWise will help our customers meet environmental goals, reduce energy costs, and become more «green» in their business through networking,» said Inbar Lasser-Raab, director of networking systems marketing for Cisco. «This is an amazing green solution. And this is just the first step in a series of innovative Cisco solutions and programs designed to ensure maximum environmental efficiency.»
EnergyWise uses intelligent networking capabilities to deliver messages that measure and control energy flows across the enterprise. The intelligent software solution manages network infrastructure (routers and switches), network endpoints — such as IP phones, wireless access points, personal computers, and IP controllers that control lighting and building life support systems.
«Today, the Cisco switch becomes an intelligent energy relay for all devices connected to the network,— says John Parello, technical director of Cisco's Switching Engineering Technologies Group and one of the co-authors of the Cisco EnergyWise solution. — All this is made possible by the EnergyWise management interface, which connects network devices and network management applications to endpoints and to each other, using the network as a single, unified environment.»
Parello has been working on the Cisco EnergyWise prototype with Tirth Ghose since December 2007. For six months, the two led the design and development team for the technology.
«The idea of putting Cisco EnergyWise into the network by embedding it into the switches made it easy to unify energy management across a wide range of devices,— says John Parello. —It also allowed us to understand where energy was being spent. We found that more than half of our energy was spent on lighting, heating, and air conditioning. Using the network to intelligently manage energy consumption will dramatically reduce our customers' costs.»
EnergyWise defines a few standard energy consumption levels that are understood by all network devices. It then enables the network to automatically recognize all managed devices. The network then begins monitoring energy consumption and responding to commands and requests. It uses a domain name system and keyword labels to query and aggregate information from large groups of devices. The network becomes a platform for aggregating energy data and distributing a single set of rules across the entire “network cloud,” greatly simplifying energy management and increasing its scalability.
For example, a manager could use EnergyWise to get aggregated data about the energy consumption of IP desk phones in a building. EnergyWise understands which devices are IP phones, where they are located, and which ones are tagged with the keyword «desktop». The manager can then develop specific rules for using those devices to reduce energy consumption and realize measurable savings. The rules can be quite detailed, describing how an endpoint device responds to network signals based on device type, tag (keyword), location, time of day, and importance. For example, IP phones in specific locations — such as a lobby or reception area — could be configured to be always on, while phones in a conference room could be put into a low-power mode or turned off completely during unoccupied hours.
According to the rules set by the manager, EnergyWise can turn off the lights and air conditioners, turn on the heating, etc. Moreover, EnergyWise can automatically turn on certain office phones, computers and wireless access points, as well as regulate the room temperature when a certain employee enters the building and registers their electronic badge at the entrance. «EnergyWise can dramatically improve the environmental friendliness of the entire company and reduce energy consumption across the entire corporate infrastructure. This technology allows you to control more than half of all greenhouse gas emissions in the global office infrastructure and housing industry,» says Inbar Lasser-Raab. She also believes that EnergyWise's open software architecture will help integrate future devices, network applications and management tools into this solution, thereby meeting the ever-evolving requirements of the business.
Cisco Systems Press Release |
