IBM and Schneider Electric has announced a new smarter buildings solution to improve energy performance for buildings across an organization.

This is critical as buildings worldwide today consume 42 percent of all electricity, and by 2025, are projected to be the largest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet. 

Together, IBM and Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management, are helping organizations reduce energy operating costs up to 30 percent as well as realize environmental responsibility goals through active energy management practices. The new IBM and Schneider Electric smarter buildings solution also enables the benefits of connectivity to the smart grid for electric utility demand response programs. 

For example, using IBM and Schneider’s energy optimization technologies, Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island has seen a 15 percent reduction in energy consumption in its data center, with similar savings expected campus wide-- across 50 buildings on 428 acres.  What began as the IT initiative to create an energy-efficient data center has extended into collaboration between the university’s IT and facilities team to deliver greater insight and control of energy consumption across the campus, further reducing the university’s carbon footprint. 

“Having the ability to look across both IT and facilities is operationally, tactically and strategically important to the Bryant University,” said Art Gloster, vice president and CIO of Bryant University. “The maturity of our converged campus network combined with energy management from IBM and Schneider Electric allows our IT and Facilities teams to work together to monitor energy consumption and reduce operational costs.” 

Today’s announcement builds on a decade strong relationship between IBM and Schneider Electric for building energy efficient data centers. Now available for buildings across industries including schools and universities, hospitals, hotels and government facilities, the new converged offering will help organizations monitor and reduce energy use to free-up capital, to sustain building efficiency through proactive maintenance programs, and reduce the incidence and costs of equipment failures. In addition, building occupants can realize peak productivity benefits by working in high performance building environments--ones that recognize building systems such as efficient lighting and indoor air quality, are interdependent but function with the “whole building” in mind, including the people that occupy them. 

“Energy is the largest controllable operating expense in a building and companies need to address it more systematically,” said Chris Davis, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, Schneider Electric Buildings Business. “Through our partnership with IBM, we can help more businesses capture and analyze their buildings’ data to achieve greater energy efficiency and reduce operating costs.” 

Schneider Electric’s building management solutions, including Andover Continuum, help monitor and control building systems - heating, ventilation, air conditioning, humidity, lighting, access control, video and physical security - across one or more facilities, providing up to a 30 percent reduction in overall energy use. When combined with IBM solutions such as IBM Green Sigma analytics, IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Energy Management, IBM Business Services Manager, and IBM Maximo Asset Management for Energy Optimization, organizations are provided with “intelligent” data to make better decisions and actions about energy use. The joint offering will address the following building management areas: 

• Energy Management: Building management solutions and services provide continuous improvement and enable an efficient enterprise to make energy safe, reliable, efficient, productive and green. When combined with IBM business analytics software, the offering will provide building owners, operators and tenants with information to continuously reduce energy consumption and waste in real-time. 
• Building Systems Management: Schneider Electric’s solutions combined with IBM Maximo asset management enables facility managers to collect and share vast amounts of facility data with business decision makers to make informed decisions with tangible savings that can be measured. By combining data from integrated HVAC, power, lighting and electrical distribution systems with security, IT and telecommunications, organizations will reap significant cost and operational savings.
• Systems Integration and Enterprise Efficiency: Convergence of Schneider Electric building management systems and IBM software reduces energy and operating costs to free up capital for addressing other business needs, while providing visibility across systems to realize smarter buildings across the enterprise.

 “There’s an increasing convergence of IT and facilities management,” said David Bartlett, Vice President, Industry Solutions, IBM Software Group. “Working together, IBM and Schneider Electric can address the growing need that C-level executives and facilities managers have to drive efficiency in all aspects of their operations. Through this relationship, we can bring our information technology expertise beyond the data center into facilities management.”