Cisco Acquires Intelligent Building Monitoring Company

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) announced its acquisition of Richards-Zeta Building Intelligence.

Cisco Completes Acquisition of Richards-Zeta Building Intelligence, Inc.

SAN JOSE, Calif. - January 27, 2009 - Cisco today announced that it has completed its purchase of privately-held Richards-Zeta Building Intelligence, Inc. The Santa Barbara, Calif., company is a leading provider of intelligent middleware technology that enables businesses to integrate building infrastructure and information technology (IT) applications over a common Internet Protocol (IP) network, resulting in improved efficiencies, greater energy savings and a reduced carbon footprint.

"Energy consumption is a global issue, and customers are increasingly demanding that energy management services are delivered over a converged IP architecture. An intelligent IP network is the platform to meet this need," said Marthin De Beer, senior vice president of Cisco's Emerging Technologies Group. "Richards-Zeta's intelligent middleware, together with the building-systems expertise of our partners and Cisco's expertise in networking technologies, will deliver complete solutions designed to maximize operational and energy efficiencies and provide cost and carbon savings for customers."

Richards-Zeta's intelligent middleware transforms building operational data into an IT-friendly format that easily integrates with existing applications. Its scalable, open platform enables the convergence of building systems onto an IP network. This integrated solution provides more effective management of energy consumption across an organization.

What motivated Cisco to make this purchase?

Richards-Zeta's intelligent middleware transforms building operational data into an IT-friendly format that easily integrates with existing applications. Its scalable, open platform enables the convergence of building systems onto an IP network. This integrated solution provides more effective management of energy consumption across an organization.

Richards-Zeta's technologies will support innovative Cisco customer solutions such as Cisco® Connected Real Estate and Cisco EnergyWise. EnergyWise, launched today in Barcelona, Spain, is a technology for Cisco Catalyst® Switches that proactively measures, reports and reduces the energy consumption of IP devices such as phones, laptops and access points. Ultimately, Richards-Zeta's technology is expected to work together with EnergyWise and industry partner solutions to enable the management of power consumption for building and IT infrastructure.

The Richards-Zeta acquisition exemplifies Cisco's "build, buy and partner" innovation strategy to move quickly into new markets and capture key market transitions. The acquisition was accounted for in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Financial terms of the transaction are undisclosed.

This looks like Cisco’s strategy of extending the reach of the network.

Add Cisco as one of the companies you can buy energy monitoring from.

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Microsoft Gets More Time to Work on its 4th Generation Data Center

Microsoft’s Mike Manos and Arne Josefsberg blog about their delay on Microsoft’s 4th Generation Data Center.

Building a Better Mousetrap a.k.a. Optimizing for Maximum Efficiency in an Economic Downturn

By Arne Josefsberg and Mike Manos, January 23, 2009


As you might have read in Microsoft’s Q2 FY09 earnings release yesterday, the company has announced cost management initiatives due to the global economic downturn. And with the earnings release back in October, Microsoft announced a reduction of projected capital expenditures by $300 million to our data centers. You might be thinking that the data center team is pulling our hair out trying to figure out how to meet our goals given the new constraints. After all, we need to continue supporting a growing base of more than 400 million Hotmail users and over a billion Live Search queries each day, plus 250 other services for Microsoft, including a fast-growing online services business for enterprise companies and the new Azure platform that software developers are beginning to use to create new services.
But we’ve been preparing for lean times for a while. This recession is the ideal backdrop to implement small changes that target big needs. Frugality drives innovation, and limited resources are just another forcing function to develop creative solutions to infrastructure needs. For our industry, this means more reasons to identify the small tweaks to products or operational approaches that can unlock big opportunities.

This slow down reminds of the opportunity I heard that Boeing’s IT Department was able to use the time the Machinists were on strike to perform maintenance and purchase upgrades they didn’t have time to do when they were in production.

The construction companies and the employees may not feel good about the delay in Microsoft’s and Google’s data center construction.  But, the delay is good use of resources, and allows each company to spend more time in design. 

As David Gauthier and Christian Belady have said their goal in the 4th generation data center is to change the costs for data center construction.

While we expect these modular innovations to reduce capital investments by 20%-40% or more depending on class, we also expect considerable reductions in operating expenses related to electricity and water consumption. Designing from the start for environmental sustainability has allowed us to focus on using less construction material up front, less energy and water during operation, and also allows us to recycle and reuse components at the end of their useful life. No longer will we be governed by the initial decisions made when constructing the facility. We will have almost unlimited use and re-use of the facility and site. We will also be able to use power in an ultra-fluid fashion moving load from critical to non-critical as use and capacity requirements dictate. 

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California Water Drought Spurs Farmers to slash Planting

Water is a scarce resource, and besides being critical for data center operations is an essential for farming.  MSNBC.com has a post on the California Drought.

Drought spurs Calif. farmers to slash planting

'It's ugly,' one grower says as tomato, melon and almond crops face hit

Image: Shawn Coburn, Juan Guadian

Shawn Coburn, left, and Juan Guadian inspect an almond orchard in Mendota, Calif., on Dec. 10, 2008.

updated 2 hours, 20 minutes ago

SAN FRANCISCO - Some of the nation's largest farms plan to cut back on planting this spring over concerns that federal water supplies will dry up as officials deal with the drought plaguing California.

Farmers in the Central Valley said Thursday they would forego planting thousands of acres of water-thirsty canning tomatoes and already have started slashing acreage for lettuce and melons.

As growers in Fresno and Kings counties prepared to sow their dry fields with tomato seeds this week, the giant water district that supplies the irrigation for their sprinklers warned them to think again.

Computer models of the state's parched reservoirs and this year's patchy snowfall showed shortages so extreme that federal officials could slash supplies down to zero, managers at the Westlands Water District told their members in an emergency conference call.

"We thought it was important to talk to our growers so they can make important planting decisions," said Sarah Woolf, a spokeswoman for Westlands, the coalition of giant agribusinesses in the state's fertile interior.

Watch for effects on Hydroelectric power.

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Google Throttles Data Center Spending, Is it Good or Bad?

DataCenterKnowledge reports on Google’s data center spending announcements.

Google Throttles Back on Data Center Spending

January 22nd, 2009 : Rich Miller

Google (GOOG) spent $368 million on its infrastructure in the fourth quarter of 2008 as it scaled back its ambitious data center building boom, idling a $600 million project. The fourth quarter capital expenditure (CapEx) total, which was included in today’s earnings release, was less than half the  $842 million Google spent on its data centers in the first quarter of 2008.  Here’s a look at the recent trend:    

  • 1Q 2006: $345 million
  • 2Q 2006: $699 million
  • 3Q 2006: $492 million
  • 4Q 2006: $367 million
  • 1Q 2007: $597 million
  • 2Q 2007: $575 million
  • 3Q 2007: $553 million
  • 4Q 2007: $678 million
  • 1Q 2008: $842 million
  • 2Q 2008: $698 million
  • 3Q 2008: $452 million
  • 4Q 2008:$368 million

Is this Good or Bad?

I think it is good as it shows Google is adapting to its customer requirements.  With the slowing economy, many Google groups have reigned in their growth forecasts, shouldn’t the date center construction slow as well?

What would be bad is if Google built relentlessly building more capacity than it needed.

The benefit Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have is they can think on scale the rest of the public can’t.  They fill data centers in a fraction of time others do.  So, data center construction can more closely match server deployments, and IT is a cyclical business.

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60% Decrease in Carbon Credits

WSJ Environmental Blog reports on a 60% decrease in carbon credits.

Cheap Carbon: Permit Prices Tank, Threatening Clean-Energy Projects

Posted by Keith Johnson

Leila Abboud reports:

In the wake of the financial meltdown, markets are under fire everywhere, kind words from President Obama notwithstanding. The meltdown and falling prices is hitting one arena especially hard: the carbon market.

After a record year in 2008, prices for carbon-emission permits in Europe have collapsed. They’re now at about 11.6 euros, down 60% from their summertime highs. Carbon prices are falling, in large part, because of the economic slowdown and a fall in industrial output; shuttered factories emit less pollution, meaning companies have an easier time meeting emissions targets and need to buy fewer permits on the open market.

Falling carbon prices isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For big utilities, like Germany’s RWE, it’s good news because it reduces their cost of complying with Europe’s increasingly tough carbon caps.

But a lower carbon price does one negative side effect: It stifles investors’ interest in clean-energy projects in the developing world.

That’s because prices have also plummeted for carbon-emission reduction credits generated by putting up wind farms in Mongolia or by cleaning up steel factories in India. Those carbon permits, known as CERs, are now flirting with record-low prices of about 10 euros. Project developers who put clean energy projects in the developing world sell the emissions credits to companies, especially those in Europe, that need to buy those credits to comply with environmental regulations. Since CERs are usually cheaper than conventional credits, companies can use them to meet part of their emissions-reductions targets.

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