TrueComm Enterprise in the Energy Environment...

Pushed forward by both private sector green initiatives and public sector funding, much emphasis has been placed on improving enterprise energy efficiency. While a few organizations may embark on green projects with the goal of saving the environment, for most it's purely a matter of dollars and cents - less energy use means less spending. To that end, enterprise energy management networks enable organizations to monitor and manage building systems such as lights or heating and cooling in the same way they manage IT resources - by giving them IP addresses and making them part of the enterprise LAN and WAN.

Energy management has long existed in one form or another, from simple programmable thermostats to large-scale environmental control systems. The significant shift now is in how these management solutions interoperate within the enterprise, as well as with outside utility providers. Because they are IP-enabled, enterprise energy management networks allow for bi-directional communication between building facilities, enterprise network administrators and the power utility.

Within any Enterprise facility there are literally thousands of data points that can be collected and monitored. Nearly all heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems have some form of sensor and control interface to determine the heating or cooling needs of a given area of the building. Most electric and water meters can likewise be monitored to determine usage. These remote devices, which are typically a hardware box with HVAC and temperature sensor connections on one end and an Ethernet interface on the other, are deployed at each facility to create a two-way integration with building environmental and energy interfaces. They not only collect the data gleaned from these sources but also offer the ability to control the equipment remotely.

These IP-based devices link to an enterprise's traditional data network, allowing for both direct management through standard browser-based configuration tools and the ability to push the collected data across the wide area network to a centralized management platform in a monitoring facility anywhere in the network.

The centralized management system collects, collates and analyzes these data points, placing the information in a database to give the organization a complete view of the energy consumption across all resources. Much like network monitoring systems, an enterprise energy management network can set the baselines of energy consumption and can quickly alert administrators to spikes in usage and other potential trouble. With that data in hand, enterprises can use the centralized environmental control to develop a consistent enterprise-wide energy policy. These policies could define the parameters for environmental and energy metrics, including range of acceptable building temperatures, low-power modes for off hours, and notification procedures if a particular building falls out of compliance. Cisco's Network Building Mediator, for example, can independently send SNMP traps to any monitoring tool, opening up the opportunity to properly shut down a user's desktop during off hours, for example, or turn down wireless access points near a conference room when it's not occupied.

While there are a number of existing players in the enterprise energy management market, including Echelon's LonWorks platform and Tridium's VYKON Energy suite, Cisco's entry into the space, with its Network Building Mediator products, has sparked particular interest in the networking community.

Within the IT community there is always a concern when new technologies are added to the LAN.  The concern over potential security vulnerabilities increases with the addition of any new technology as well as the possibility of additional network congestion.  True Communications Enterprise network engineers have solved both of these issues through the utilization of network architecture parameters that ensure dynamic bandwidth allocation and packet management policies.  True Communications can ensure that after the addition of these new technologies that the infrastructure remains secure and free of additional network congestions.