IBM this week at its Pulse Conference in Orlando introduced monitoring software capabilities that Big Blue says will help enterprise IT managers monitor and reduce energy consumption across data centers and physical plants.

IBM created an additional collector for its IBM Tivoli Monitoring products that is designed to gather information around power consumption and energy management from devices the software typically monitors such as servers as well as other devices like power and cooling equipment. The latter monitoring capabilities come by way of partnerships Big Blue forged to make it possible for Tivoli monitoring tools to accept data from partner products.

"We took an approach that enables our customers to acquire these capabilities in a standard, straightforward way," says Chris O'Connor, vice president of IBM Tivoli strategy and marketing. "Using existing footprints, customers can start to bring in this data that once you have it can be used for many purposes."

IBM says its 8,000 unique clients with IBM Tivoli Monitoring in house can turn on the power and energy management capabilities, without having to deploy more software. And new customers can acquire a comprehensive monitoring product that features power management capabilities.

As part of this announcement IBM partnered with: APC and TAC by Schneider Electric, Eaton Corporation, Emerson Network Power, Johnson Controls Inc., Matrikon, OSIsoft, Siemens Building Technologies, SynapSense Corporation, and VMware.

"We anticipate other partnerships," O'Connor says.

The software and partnerships are part of IBM's Project Big Green initiative, launched in May 2007, in which the vendor committed $1 billion per year to deliver technologies to enable energy efficiencies in customer environments. And while most customers are looking at the economic -- more so than the environmental -- benefits of monitoring power usage and consumption, IBM's expanded initiative around "Software for a Greener World" will help get customers started down the path to more efficient operations, industry watchers say.

"By creating one cohesive view of energy consumption across the enterprise, customers will be able to use IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Green Energy to manage power usage and predict potential energy-related events," says Rich Ptak, co-founder and analyst at Ptak, Noel & Associates. "This is a giant step in energy management as it brings data center and facility management together to help increase energy efficient operations across the enterprise."

Denise Dubie is senior editor with Network World.