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3: Collaboration Is Key for Green IT 43

adopted automation for efficiency, and those industrial systems are now
being leveraged to reduce energy consumption.
Groups of forward-looking vendors have begun to think about how
the EMS and IT worlds should converge. The concepts center around
removing the long-standing wall between building networks and IT
(tenant) networks. Mixed into this dialogue are other low-profile sys-
tems common in most buildings, such as security, air quality, and life
safety. Cisco has approached the building controls industry with the
notion that information is the “fourth utility” after electricity, gas, and
water. Cisco has proposed moving EMS to the IP network, not only for
efficiency, but also for the information synergies involved. Business
information has a strategic and tactical value, and information about the
building’s performance is no different.
Protocols, however, are among the stumbling blocks. Building sys-
tems operate on largely special-purpose open systems (such as BACnet or
LonWorks), and a few proprietary systems remain popular. Today, both
types of systems can talk to the IP network through gateways. Within
the last few years, the building-control industry has discovered XML.
ptg
Middleware applications gather information and normalize it for con-
sumption by ERP, accounting, and other enterprise applications.

Energy Utilities

This topic is covered in more detail in Chapter 5 (and specific case
studies are analyzed in Chapter 9, “Green IT Case Studies for Energy
Utilities”). Electric utilities provide interesting case studies because
they can provide incentives for their customers to move to green IT. For
example, the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) has worked with sev-
eral IT vendors to consolidate its servers, and the company has devel-
oped new ways to measure and reduce heat in data centers. They
announced this initiative in 2007 at a conference in New York City,
where companies such as American Power Conversion Corp. (APC),
Eaton Corp., General Electric Consumer & Industrial, IBM, and others
gathered to discuss green computing and power-saving initiatives.
Before embarking on its server consolidation efforts, PG&E teamed
with IBM Research to develop a tool to measure the three-dimensional
temperature distributions in its data centers. IBM used its new Mobile
Measurement Technology (MMT) to survey the relevant physical param-
eters of PG&E data centers and visualize (via 3-D images) hot spots, air