IBM has created a Green Sigma industry coalition to create products and services that businesses can use to better understand energy and water usage, as well as manage waste.
Charter members of the Green Sigma Coalition are Johnson Controls, Honeywell Building Solutions, ABB, Eaton, ESS, Cisco, Siemens Building Technologies Division, Schneider Electric and SAP.
The coalition members will work with IBM to integrate their products and services with IBM’s Green Sigma solution.
Green Sigma applies Lean Six Sigma principles and practices to energy, water, waste and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions throughout a company’s operations – transportation systems, data centres and IT systems, manufacturing and distribution centres, office facilities, retail space, and research and development sites.
It combines real-time metering and monitoring with advanced analytics and dashboards, allowing clients to make better decisions that improve efficiency, lower costs and reduce environmental impact.
The solution will also mean companies using these combined solutions can better understand energy and water usage, waste, and GHG emissions across their business operations, and make changes to improve efficiency, reduce consumption and waste, and lower environmental impact.
“As we all work toward creating a greener, smarter planet, it is plain that none of us can get there alone,” said Rich Lechner, IBM’s vice-president for energy and environment.
“Through public and private partnerships, and with leaders across a range of industries and technologies combining and sharing our expertise and talent, we can create the solutions the world needs to conserve resources and address climate change,” Lechner said.
Novell and Thunderhead have received Ready for IBM Energy and Environment validation for their software solutions. The program is designed to help IBM Business Partners validate, market and sell solutions bearing a unique mark that assures clients the product or service has been rigorously evaluated and demonstrated to reduce environmental impact based on real-world customer use.
IBM’s validation process requires products and services to meet stringent criteria that address the reduction or use of resources such as energy, water and paper materials. Submissions are reviewed by the IBM Energy & Environment Review Board and IBM’s Corporate Environmental Affairs group;
IBM and Cisco have integrated IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Energy Management and Cisco EnergyWise energy management solution.
The new combined solution broadens the range of power consumption information and energy optimisation policies that can be managed by IBM Energy Management solutions to help organisations discover, optimise and report energy usage within their data centre and business infrastructure.
And IBM and Honeywell will integrate Tivoli Monitoring for Energy Management with Honeywell’s EBI and Tridium offerings.
By John Kennedy
