Cisco to pay US$107m for JouleX's IoT-based network energy management systems and skills

San Jose, California, USA – Cisco has announced its intention to acquire privately-held JouleX, a leader in enterprise IT energy management for network-attached and data centre assets. JouleX, with headquarters in Atlanta, GA, is said to complement Cisco’s existing services and Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities by using the network’s view and control of energy usage across global IT environments.

Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay approximately US$107 million in cash and retention-based incentives in exchange for all shares of JouleX. The acquisition of JouleX is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2013, subject to customary closing conditions.

As the need for improved energy management increases, global companies are faced with a new set of energy-related challenges. Increasingly, enterprises are focusing on network and IT energy efficiency and are seeking solutions to control energy consumption across their campuses and data centres. JouleX provides software for networked devices for enterprise and data centre energy management, analytics, policy governance and compliance.

Cisco says that JouleX’s energy management solution, together with Cisco EnergyWise™, will provide customers with a simple software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based 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. JouleX’s software helps to reduce energy costs by monitoring, analysing and managing energy usage of all network-connected devices and systems through a set of policies derived through analytics tailored for an enterprise’s needs.

“JouleX’s technology will strengthen Cisco Services’ Smart Offerings and complements our evolving services strategy. It extends our ‘Internet of Things’ capabilitiesand is a good alignment to Cisco EnergyWise,” said Faiyaz Shahpurwala, senior vice president, Industry Solutions. “With network-enabled devices increasing exponentially, our partners and customers are asking for this solution today to operationalise their energy management capabilities in the network and reduce cost. JouleX’s cloud-enabled, agent-less architecture will allow our partners and customers to quickly deploy this solution at scale in addressing their IT energy management needs.”

The acquisition of JouleX is said to exemplify the San Jose-based IT giant’s innovation framework and to support Cisco’s five foundational priorities by enhancing its software and service offering across all customer segments and advancing its business and technology architecture. The JouleX acquisition is aligned to Cisco’s goals of developing and delivering innovative energy management solutions that streamline data and work flow across a unified network.

JouleX was founded in Munich, Germany and has research and development operations in Kassel, Germany.  On completion of the acquisition, JouleX employees will be integrated into the Connected Energy Solutions team within Cisco’s Industry Solutions Group, reporting to David Goddard, vice president and general manager.