ecoSoftware upgrade targets integration, globalisation

CA Technologies unveiled the latest iteration of its sustainability software Monday to help large organizations track and analyze energy, carbon dioxide emissions, water, and other environmental metrics.

A range of large organisations, such as Tesco and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, already use CA ecoSoftware to track emissions or energy consumption. Its new 2.0 version includes a number of enhancements the company's customers have asked for, such as integration capabilities and new features for organisations with sites spanning geographies and languages.

CA ecoSoftware 2.0 includes two products: CA ecoGovernance, delivered as an on-demand Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), is aimed at tracking energy, carbon emissions and other sustainability metrics; CA ecoMeter is an operational energy management technology that automates real-time energy use data from a range of devices.

CA ecoMeter, an on-premise application, starts at about $50,000, while CA ecoGovernance has a list price starting at a few thousand dollars per month up to tens of thousands of dollars per month, depending on the scale, the company said.

One of the new enhancements allows for CA ecoSoftware 2.0 to integrate with infrastructure already in place, such as IT or building management systems.

"The idea was we wanted to enable customers to leverage their existing systems, not rip out what they aready have," said Peter Gilbert, vice president of the company's ecoSoftware business unit. "Our gateway technology allows them to configure to existing devices and systems more easily."

CA ecoSoftware 2.0 also enables integration with the EPA's Energy Star Portfolio Manager software, which requires data entry. "Why do it twice? Especially when a number of companies have data fed automatically into the EPA Portfolio Manager," Gilbert said in a phone interview.

Another enhancement theme for CA ecoSoftware 2.0 is globalisation - making the system functionable in global organisations where users live in different geographies and speak different languages. The technology can show data in various currencies, measurement units and is available in one of nine languages.

Gilbert said one of CA ecoSoftware's strengths is its scalability for very large organisations with multiple sites that may be too complicated to track using spreadsheets.

"The reality is that is you are an organization that has one to three sites, you may not need a automated solution to do this," Gilbert said. "But if you're an organization with hundreds of sites, or like Tesco, with the number of suppliers (it is tracking), it's really hard to do with spreadsheets."

A short video describing ecoSoftware's implementation at Tesco is now available online.

This article first appeared at ClimateBiz.com