[eykanal]

Very interesting overview. I wonder how the sensors work... can they detect a broken pipe at a specific location? The article also kept referring to "equipment"... how granular does that get? Is an entire heating system one piece of "equipment", or can they get down to the component level?

Still, very cool. I know we trivialize dealing with lots of data, but still, this is a huge amount of information they have to automatically receive, triage, prioritize, and possibly even act upon. Impressive.

[ronbo]

My thought is that even if they are only detecting water and electricity throughput in each building and the temperature and light in each room, they can see hot-spots where too much energy or water is being used. If they have a model of the wiring, piping and heating conduits, then a defective part might be identified or at least a limited set of possibilities be found.

I think MS is one of the greenest IT companies in the world - folks here should give credit where its due. They have also been setting standards for energy conservation in co-lo facilities.