Convergence alert: Keep an eye on the building network tech guys

This is one of those thinking-out-loud posts that I believe will inform many GreenTech Pastures posts to come. Just wanted to direct your attention to a new ad campaign out of IBM this morning that is focused on the role that "smart buildings" will play in the green movement in general.

This ad made me think of the big Cisco EnergyWise announcement from several weeks ago, in which the networking giant is making a play to facilitate better power management across networks of all types. Here's the background on that.

Sitting here at the Uptime Institute's Lean, Clean & Green IT Symposium in New York, there has been a common theme during the keynote speeches so far: the push for better integration of the activities of the facilities management role and the IT management role.

I know, this is nothing that surprises you, but the common point made in these presentations has been that closer alignment with the facilities function is the only way that an IT team can gather up enough information about the power and cooling costs associated with a server to understand its true cost of ownership. Remember that TCO acronym? How many of you include power costs and cooling costs in your procurement number, not just the price of the hardware, software and IT maintenance services?

This all said, I'm sensing that there's going to continue to be interesting activity as some of the classic IT data center players (IBM, Cisco and Hewlett-Packard chief among them) start working on projects with the building networks technology companies. I'd recommend that you get someone on your IT team to start researching some of the companies that could play a role here such as Johnson Controls, which provides building management systems and energy management services; Panduit, which provides the physical cabling, infrastructure and control panels inside your walls and data center; or even Echelon, a long-time player in building controls and networking technology.

There are many others in this space, of course, but I think it's interesting to note that Johnson Controls is a close partner of both Cisco and IBM, and Panduit has developed a number of Cisco-compatible technologies that it hopes will marry its physical infrastructure products more closely to Cisco switches. (I should disclose that I know the latter bit of information because I am working on some messaging collateral related to those products.) When the market turns and mergers and acquisitions heat up again, there should be some really interesting activity between these two communities.