For every law or regulation, from privacy rules to AI audit regulations, there’s a way for data and software to help businesses comply. It’s true of environmental rules, too, which is why IBM just bought Envizi, a company that provides software for managing emissions and carbon accounting, as well as environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting.
Envizi works with customers like hospitals, shopping malls, banks, airports and schools, providing software that takes in data — think greenhouse gas emissions information associated with office locations — then employs machine learning and data science to analyze it, visualize it and help businesses manage workflows to prepare reports to regulators. Some of that building sustainability management data, such as data associated with HVAC systems, flows in via IoT sensors, for example.
The company has worked with clients such as manufacturing and supply-chain management company Celestica and grocery distributor Metcash Trading. And, yes, Envizi’s software applications are available in multicloud environments through cloud platforms such as AWS.
The plan for IBM is to integrate Envizi’s software with its existing systems used for environmental sustainability management, including its Environmental Intelligence Suite, Maximo asset management and Sterling supply-chain software.
It will also tie it into its Turbonomic software, which automates decisions regarding where to run data- and compute-hungry enterprise data and application workloads. That stuff sucks up energy, too, of course.
Envizi partners with companies including Accenture and Microsoft. According to an IBM spokesperson, those partnerships will remain intact.
The companies did not disclose financial terms of the deal.
Climate TRACE's data show emissions at the facility-level.Image: Climate TRACE