“Over the past two years the home and building energy management markets have evolved in such a way that we believe we can provide more value to our customers and the industry by enabling interoperability through our core networking products and solutions as part of our integrated architecture within the broader Smart Grid effort.
“For building energy management, this means we are actively pursuing several strategic options for Cisco’s Network Building Mediator and Mediator Manager product line, with an emphasis on minimising the impact on current customers, partners and employees. For energy management in the home, we will transition our focus from creating premise energy management devices to using the network as the platform for supporting innovative applications and architectures that will improve our customers’ value proposition in the consumer energy management market”. Cisco has had an end-to-end approach to Smart Grids through its Connected Grid strategy, with REM one of the building blocks. There were a number of announcements a year or so ago, including a touch-screen in-home display (IHD) and energy management software for monitoring and controlling energy use. The IHD connects to smart meters, with Ethernet and WiFi connectivity to a home network.
Cisco’s withdrawal from the market is less of a surprise than Microsoft and Google’s withdrawals (see SER blog, July 2011). Cisco is well placed to provide the network and connectivity capabilities across the Smart Grid infrastructure, but REM is a more specialised area and clearly not core business for the company.
REM will be a significant market in the long term, but it is currently fragmented and immature. That is likely to be the case until smart meter and Smart Grid technology is more settled. Already there are many specialist companies offering a range of solutions. It is possible Microsoft and Google will re-enter the market through acquisition, when the dust has settled, but it doesn’t really make much sense for Cisco to be there at all, except to provide the connectivity.
A version of this article first appeared in The Green IT Review (www.thegreenitreport.com)
