Cisco announced Smart Connected Buildings as its latest emerging technology, a key component in delivering on its vision for Smart+Connected Communities, one of 30 key market adjacencies the company has identified. Smart+Connected Communities addresses the growing need for sustainable energy to meet the demand of increasingly urbanized populations by providing a network-enabled blueprint for successful smart cities of the future that run on networked information. The solution builds on Cisco's networked sustainability platform to further utilize the network to increase energy efficiency, create new tools for 'energy-aware' city management, and enable economic opportunity and quality of life gains for citizens.

As a key component of delivering on the Smart+Connected Communities vision, Cisco today announced the availability of the Cisco® Network Building Mediator, a Smart Connected Buildings solution that provides the intelligence to interconnect and enable building systems such as heating, ventilation and cooling (HVAC), lighting, electrical, security, and renewables over the IP network to build smart and energy-efficient buildings of the future. This provides operators and owners of these buildings with new ways of managing how energy is used based on policies that make sense for occupants.

As the majority of electricity in the US is consumed in offices and commercial buildings, Cisco believes the network has the potential to create a significant impact on global energy efficiency and reduction of Green House Gas emissions by further integrating information technology into Smart Connected Buildings. By continuing to extend our networked sustainability platform, Cisco will help accelerate energy innovations over IP from energy generation across the grid to commercial buildings and all the way to the home.