Cisco Buys JouleX for $107 Million for Energy Management SaaS

Cisco is acquiring JouleX, a provider of enterprise IT energy management for data center assets, for approximately $107 million. The acquisition enhances Cisco’s software-as-a-service offerings with energy management, fitting particularly well with Cisco EnergyWise. The acquisition is expected to be complete in the fourth quarter of this year.

Joulex developed an agentless system that detects devices on IP networks and tracks their power use. The combined solution will provide customers with a way to measure, monitor and manage energy usage for network and IT systems without the need for device side agents, hardware meters or network configurations.  It uses capabilities of the network to gain visibility into and control of energy usage across global IT environments. JouleX previously raised $17 million back in 2011.

"JouleX’s technology will strengthen Cisco Services’ Smart Offerings and complements our evolving services strategy," said Faiyaz Shahpurwala, senior vice president, Industry Solutions at Cisco. "It extends our ‘Internet of Things’ capabilities and is a good alignment to Cisco EnergyWise. With network-enabled devices increasing exponentially, our partners and customers are asking for this solution today to operationalize 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."

JouleX employees will be integrated into the Connected Energy Solutions team within Cisco’s Industry Solutions Group, reporting to David Goddard, vp and general manager. Cisco will pay approximately $107 million in cash and retention-based incentives in exchange for all shares of JouleX

JouleX is headquartered in Atlanta with offices in Shanghai, Tokyo, Paris, Munich and Kassel, Germany, and throughout the United States..

There is a big focus on network and IT energy efficiency, with enterprises seeking solutions to control energy consumption across infrastructure. JouleX gives Cisco some deeper intelligence around energy consumption, in a SaaS-based, agentless way, boosting its capabilities. The company is privately held with capital investments from Target Partners, TechOperators, Sigma Partners, Flybridge Capital Partners and Intel Capital.