IBM has created an industry alliance with key leaders in metering, monitoring, automation, data communications and software to provide smart solutions for energy, water, waste and greenhouse gas management.
Charter members of the Green Sigma Coalition are Johnson Controls, Honeywell Building Solutions, ABB, Eaton, ESS, Cisco, Siemens Building Technologies Division, Schneider Electric and SAP. The coalition members will work with IBM to integrate their products and services with IBM's Green Sigma solution.
This will allow companies using these combined solutions to better understand energy and water usage, waste, and greenhouse gas emissions across their business operations and make changes to improve efficiency, reduce consumption and waste, and lower environmental impact.
"As we all work toward creating a greener, smarter planet, it is plain that none of us can get there alone," said Rich Lechner, IBM's vice president for energy and environment. "Through public and private partnerships, and with leaders across a range of industries and technologies combining and sharing our expertise and talent, we can create the solutions the world needs to conserve resources and address climate change."
Green Sigma is an IBM solution that applies Lean Six Sigma principles and practices to energy, water, waste and GHG emissions throughout a company's operations – transportation systems, data centers and IT systems, manufacturing and distribution centers, office facilities, retail space, research and development sites, etc.
It combines real-time metering and monitoring with advanced analytics and dashboards that allow clients to make better decisions that improve efficiency, lower costs and reduce environmental impact.
IBM announced the Green Sigma Coalition in support of its Green and Beyond Summit for Industry leaders in San Francisco on June 23. The program includes panel discussions with key industry leaders and public officials on public/private collaboration for a greener planet, covering sustainability and energy management across business operations and demand reduction, incentives and compliance.
In addition to the Green Sigma Coalition, IBM announced several other new or expanded relationships with key industry leaders, including: Novell and Thunderhead have received Ready for IBM Energy and Environment validation for their software solutions. The program is designed to help IBM Business Partners validate, market and sell solutions bearing a unique mark that assures clients the product or service has been rigorously evaluated and demonstrated to reduce environmental impact based on real-world customer use.
IBM's validation process requires products and services to meet stringent criteria that address the reduction or use of resources such as energy, water and paper materials. Submissions are reviewed by the IBM Energy & Environment Review Board and IBM's Corporate Environmental Affairs group. IBM and Cisco have integrated IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Energy Management and Cisco EnergyWise energy management solution. The new combined solution broadens the range of power consumption information and energy optimization policies that can be managed by IBM Energy Management solutions to help organizations discover, optimize and report energy usage within their data center and business infrastructure.
And IBM and Honeywell will integrate Tivoli Monitoring for Energy Management with Honeywell's EBI and Tridium offerings.
"NYSERDA has a longstanding partnership with IBM. Together, we have invested over $15 Million for energy efficiency improvements to IBM's New York facilities," said Francis J. Murray Jr., president and CEO of the New York State Energy and Development Authority. "We are proud to continue that partnership with IBM and the Green Sigma Coalition as it designs effective energy efficiency and carbon reduction strategies for New York's manufacturers, data centers and other businesses. As we develop statewide energy strategies, we see the problems and bottlenecks created by stand-alone solutions and disparate systems that cannot share information. We applaud IBM's approach of sharing expertise and technology through industry collaboration with IBM's Green Sigma Coalition and other public/private partnerships. The coalition's goal of providing customers with a unified view of their energy, water, waste and greenhouse gas emissions to enable overall efficiency and reduce environmental impact represents a significant advancement in the market."