Cisco on Wednesday said it plans to buy JouleX, a company that has developed software for tracking data center energy use, for $ 107 million in cash and incentives. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this fiscal year.
JouleX software lets customers monitor energy use of all devices attached to a network. Reports on usage can stream in from a data center, rack, slot or business-unit level, among others. Customers can keep an eye on carbon emissions, set alerts based on energy use and enforce policies in order to lower costs.
Cisco already has EnergyWise energy-management protocol for tracking energy use inside networks. The JouleX software will be able to integrate with EnergyWise.
The combination of the two “will provide customers with a simple way to measure, monitor and manage energy usage for network and IT systems across the enterprise, without the use of device-side agents, hardware meters or network configurations,” according to a statement.
Webscale data center operators have been keen on highlighting their energy efficiency, with disclosures coming from Facebook, eBay and Google. Greater adoption of the JouleX software as a result of the acquisition could lead enterprise data center operators to boast of their own improvements on power-usage effectiveness (PUE).
At the same time, lower energy costs on premise could also reduce the likelihood that an enterprise customer would feel pressure to look to a public or hybrid cloud model. And that’s good for Cisco, which wants to ensure that companies keep buying switches and other network gear.
Meanwhile, the deal is a boon to Atlanta-based JouleX’s investors. Most recently the company raised $ 17 million from Flybridge Capital Partners, Intel Capital, Sigma Partners, Target Partners and TechOperators.
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