SAN FRANCISCO - IBM and Schneider Electric have announced a new combined solution to improve energy performance in buildings across an organization. The joint offering is designed to help organizations proactively manage energy efficiency for their buildings.

According to the companies, this announcement builds on a decade-long 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, said the companies.

“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, said the company. 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 for continuous improvement. Combined with IBM business analytics software, this 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 large 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 can 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.”

For more information about IBM, visit www.ibm.com/smarterplanet. For more information about Schneider Electric, visit www.schneider-electric.us.

Publication date: 10/18/2010