Sep 13 2010
Cisco divulges its plan of acquiring Arch Rock, a wireless sensor networking company based on IP, manufacturing sensors for smart-grid solutions, located in San Francisco. Cisco expects to create a smart-metering alliance with this plan, as Arch Rock’s wireless sensor devices, link smart meters and other instruments, over a safe and multi-way mesh network.
According to Laura Ipsen, General Manager, and Senior Vice President of Cisco, the wireless mesh’s technological input from Arch Rock, would definitely boost Cisco’s IP-based smart-grid products.
This agreement is consequent to a pact between Cisco and Itron, for developing methods of augmenting smart-metering products. The inference being, that Cisco wanted to prove to Itron and the world that, it meant business. According to Berg Insight’s predictions, the market for smart electricity meters is expected to have a serious growth of 31.1% between the years 2009 and 2015, thus proving to be an ideal time to invest in this field. With Market penetration rates growing by leaps and bounds in most regions of the world, Cisco can expect a huge increase in its clientele. Cisco also acquired ExtendMedia, a company concentrating on content management applications for multi-screen video, all for adding to their current portfolio.
Arch Rock further delivers a product named Energy Optimizer, by which industries could scrutinize energy consumption by their data centers. This would help a firm to gather data, such as amount of power consumed, parameters such as temperature, humidity levels, CO2 levels, and so on thereby saving almost 40% of energy, which would be of immense benefit to Cisco, whose main enterprise consists of servers and data centers.
Source: http://www.cisco.com/