Be it tax-credits/subsidies in different parts of the world or the recent news of California setting up a carbon trading exchange -no week passes by without the mention of "the importance of saving energy" or "reducing greenhouse gases". Yet, with the explosion of technology and IP-connected devices; IT consumes over 25% of energy in a commercial building or office.

So why am I writing about this in a Cisco blog and what has this got to do with networking?

Cisco has developed a unique network-based energy management protocol based on Cisco IOS Software that helps customer's monitor, report and control energy consumption of IP connected devices -Cisco EnergyWise. For over 2 years customers globally have been using the power of Cisco EnergyWise in their networks to manage the energy consumption of their campus IT environments. A review of five public customer case studies show close to US$400,000 annual savings per customer.

Cisco is now excited to announce Cisco EnergyWise Fast-Start$0 SKUs to accelerate energy savings for our customers. These Fast-Start SKUs will enable new Cisco Catalyst 4500, 3750, and 3560 Switch customers to deploy a subset of energy management applications at no charge. These have been launched in conjunction with three key EnergyWise CDN (Cisco Developer Network) partners -JouleX, Verdiem, and Nimsoft (CA Technologies).

Before this Cisco EnergyWise Fast-Start$0 SKU program Cisco was shipping Cisco EnergyWise with all Catalyst switches at no charge (as part of Cisco IOS), but most customers still had to purchase a management application from a Cisco EnergyWise partner. Now, when the customers buy a Catalyst 4000, 3700 or 3500 series switch/line-card, limited functionality management applications from the above three vendors -JouleX, Verdiem, and Nimsoft (CA Technologies) will be available at no charge via these Cisco$0 SKU. The exact functionality of the EnergyWise Fast-Start SKU varies by each partner, but in general energy monitoring and control for PoE, Cisco, and Cisco EnergyWise enabled devices is free. Energy monitoring for PCs is also available at no charge.

Cisco EnergyWise Fast-Start$0 SKUs are available when ordering directly from Cisco or when ordering through a Cisco authorized distributor. Fast-Start SKUs must be ordered at the same time as, and in conjunction with, the orders for Cisco Catalyst 4500/3700/3500 PoE, PoE+, and UPOE switches/line-card. We really hope this will further extend the power of Cisco EnergyWise by enabling Cisco customers to manage enterprise-wide energy without an upfront CAPEX investment.

For more information on Cisco EnergyWise contact [email protected]