Cisco's latest emerging technology -- or latest $1 billion-plus opportunity -- is Smart Connected Buildings, a market which requires an information network to enable buildings and cities to increase energy efficiency. Smart Connected Buildings falls under Cisco's Smart+Connected Communities initiative, one of the 30 market adjacencies Cisco is addressing in addition to its core routing and switching infrastructure business.
The brains behind the building smarts is the Cisco Network Building Mediator, which interconnects building systems such as HVAC, lighting, electrical and security to manage energy consumption in that building. The mediator also allows building managers to add and support renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind and fuel cells, while monitoring existing systems, Cisco says.
The mediator gathers building system data and converts it into an XML/SOAP format for digestion by applications, services and management systems. It supports Cisco's EnergyWise software for energy usage management, and applications from more than 20 developer partners.
The mediator is available now and costs $5,000.
Smart Connected Buildings is the office equivalent of Cisco's Smart Grid program, which aims to allow utilities to manage enregy consumption in neighborhoods via an IP network. Cisco has tabbed this opportunity to be between $20 billion and $100 billion, and about 1000x the size of the Internet in terms of equipment scale.
Smart Connected Buildings is a new Cisco business unit, incubated and headquartered out of the company's Globalisation Centre East in Bangalore, India. It includes technology from Cisco's acquisition of building management company Richards-Zeta in January.
More from Cisco Subnet:
- Juniper bests Cisco, others for NYSE upgrade
- Is Avaya about to distance itself from Cisco?
- 3Com bests Cisco in school upgrade
- Cisco rival Nortel liquidating assets
- Cisco selling refurbished Linksys directly to end users
- Security Updates plus 46 Security fixes - iPhone Is Enterprise Ready Now!?
- Happy 2-Year Anniversary - A Reminder to Focus on What's Really Important in Network Engineering
Win training and books from Cisco Subnet
Like e-mail? Subscribe to the Cisco Alert newsletter. Like RSS readers? Subscribe to the Cisco Subnet RSS feed
Follow Cisco Subnet on Twitter.
The Cisco Subnet blog is written by Network World managing editor Jim Duffy and is the official blog of Network World's Cisco Subnet community. The Cisco Subnet site is managed by Online Community Editor Julie Bort. Cisco Subnet is the independent voice of Cisco customers and is your gateway to daily Cisco news, blogs, opinion, books, prize giveaways and more. Visit the Cisco Subnet home page daily and while you are there, subscribe to the Cisco Alert e-mail newsletter, which includes news and views generated by the Cisco Subnet community as well as Cisco-related stories on Network World and elsewhere on the Web.
The Leader in Network Knowledge
Post new comment