Cisco EnergyWise uses standard protocols, such as Simple Network Management Protocol and Secure Sockets Layer, to smoothly work with third-party network management systems.

With the implementation of Cisco EnergyWise technology solutions, users can:

• Simply and quickly set up in-depth power management
• Track and improve the energy use of a comprehensive set of devices
• Reduce energy expenditures within the organization
• Gradually minimize total ownership expenditures by saving energy

This green technology has also been used to manage and optimize commercial building energy usage. The technology focuses on facilities such as heating, air conditioning and lighting. By determining how energy efficient these systems are, they can be more closely and efficiently managed to reduce costs. By using central policy servers, Cisco believes that they can even effectively control the efficiency of whole groups of commercial buildings.

The core of the solution is the Cisco Network Building Mediator, which constitutes the physical hardware that is used to connect a building's systems together. This mediator is capable of monitoring up to 5,000 energy information points, each of which is a single point of data such as temperature, duct pressure and chiller water flow rate (used for cooling electronic equipment).