So Cisco announced their new “EnergyWise” solution this week that really seems to have a lot of promise.  It makes a lot of sense if you ask me.  With all the Cisco switches out there and with all the PoE (power of ethernet) devices like Cisco VoIP phones and access points all which get their power from the switches I think this is a perfect fit for Cisco.  Cisco has been making a big push into the building security side of things as well these days all of which adds up to great potential for the EnergyWise product.

One of the demos Cisco has for EnergyWise is the idea that when an employee comes to work and scans their badge when entering the building (building security) the system is then able to power up the employees IP phone and maybe turn on the power to their computer and office lights.  The IP phone and computer are easy to accomplish, not far fetched at all.  The powering on and off the office lights I am not so sure about.  Assuming they partnered with the right people for building controls, and assuming offices were doing office level zones then yeah its possible but not likely. 

My own experience (very minor at that) with the building controls for lighting and what not has shown me over the years that most create zones that are much bigger than single offices.  This is probably due to the cost of the equipment to manage a large number of zones.  However there is still a lot of potential with EnergyWise as a whole.

There is an example on the EnergyWise blog which I find fascinating:

“ if a single enterprise with 5000 employees were to just switch off its IP phones and wireless access points when not needed, it would save 185 tons of greenhouse gas a year—the equivalent of the emissions from 67 homes.”

This side of EnergyWise alone has a lot of potential and I think will be adopted by many.  It would be great to power down all the IP phones every night.  Even if you dont do it for ‘Green’ reasons but just to extend the life of the phones.  I am curious about how it handles those one off situations where someone may come into the office late to work or something.  Have to look into that.

With their partnership with Verdiem and others I think they are taking the right approach with all of this.  Glad to see that this isn’t a Cisco only solution where it is either all them or nothing.  I look forward to seeing how this will all play out and can’t wait to get my hands on some of this.