Cisco Systems’ purchase of Richards-Zeta Building Intelligence plays into the company’s “build, buy and partner” strategy for expanding rapidly into new markets and taking advantage of market transitions.
Cisco and Richards-Zeta completed the deal Jan. 27. The enterprise networking giant did not disclose the financial details of its latest acquisition.
As a scalable and open platform, Richards-Zeta’s middleware can integrate both building infrastructure systems and IT applications onto a common IP network, in turn leading to efficiencies in energy-consumption management, a reduction in a facility’s carbon footprint and the accompanying cost savings.
“Energy consumption is a global issue and customers are increasingly demanding that energy management services are delivered over a converged IP architecture,” Marthin De Beer, senior vice president of Cisco’s Emerging Technologies Group, said in a statement. “An intelligent IP network is the platform to meet this need.”
Richards-Zeta will be integrated into Cisco’s Emerging Technologies Group that is part of Cisco’s Globalisation Centre East, and overseen by under De Beer.
The Emerging Technologies Group fosters new businesses, both to generate revenue and propel Cisco into new markets. Cisco sees cost and carbon savings as an increasing priority for customers given current economic and environmental issues.
The first annnounced task for the middleware will be supporting Cisco’s Connected Real Estate and EnergyWise; the latter actively measures and reduces the energy use of phones, computers, access points and other IP devices, and it is expected that Richards-Zeta’s software will work in concert with EnergyWise and other industry-partner solutions to ultimately make building and IT infrastructure more power efficient.