Cisco Cisco Energy Management for Distributed Offices Libro bianco
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Some Primary Differences between Departments
Energy Capacity Planning
When facilities plans for energy needs, the determination is based on power per square foot or power per user.
They typically use a standard power calculation of X watts per square foot, based on office building, data center,
and so on, or allocation of power per user. This metric allows facilities to determine the energy needs of a building.
IT generally does not worry about the amount of power needed until or unless it needs more.
Device Management
Although building management systems automate many of the larger devices in the facility, the majority of devices
in facilities are manually managed.
In IT, there is not a single device that isn’t managed by something. IT typically has thousands of devices to
manage, but facilities have hundreds of large devices.
Budget
The network-connected energy management platform is an IT product, but facilities typically gets the budget relief
of any energy savings. In general, IT does not own the energy management budget in the company; facilities does.
Since energy is provided, managed, and budgeted through facilities, this department now has to utilize IT as a
service organization the same way all of the other business units do. We believe that there is plenty of common
ground between these departments, making this an opportunity for both groups to collaborate on reducing energy
consumption and providing a more sustainable IT infrastructure.
Learning to Speak the Language
Though each of these departments has a different perspective on energy (facilities making sure that costs are kept
as low as possible, while still delivering the necessary amount of power to the company; IT delivering ever
increasing computing capabilities to the business, while also maintaining service-level agreements), they are not as
incompatible as they appear on the surface. Bridging the gap between facilities and IT begins with understanding
that each speaks a different language.
While the term control points might be alien to the IT department, the IT equivalent, IP addresses, is just as
unfamiliar to the facilities team. We believe that learning to speak the native language of the department being
addressed will go a long way toward building a collaborative atmosphere between the two departments.
By simply understanding the vernacular, facilities and IT teams can more easily collaborate and advance energy
management initiatives for the organization. Table 1 is a reference table to help facilities and IT teams find
common ground and start a meaningful conversation.
Table 1.
Terminology to Help Facilities and IT Understand Each Other
Term
Facilities
IT
Transport
Serial interfaces RS242, 422, 485, and more
Ethernet
Control systems
Building management systems, facilities management systems
Systems management, network management
systems
systems
Device references
Control points
IP addresses
Protocols
BACnet, Modbus, and dozens of other open and proprietary
protocols
protocols
TCP/IP
Environment
Hundreds that are more manually managed
Thousands of devices typically automated