Effective May 31, 2012, Microsoft is discontinuing the Microsoft Hohm service.

The feedback from customers and partners has remained encouraging throughout Microsoft Hohm's beta period. However, due to the slow overall market adoption of the service, the company is focusing efforts on products and solutions more capable of supporting long-standing growth within this evolving market.

Microsoft Hohm has helped demonstrate the critical role of information in helping people and organizations improve how energy is generated, distributed and consumed. Microsoft will continue to focus on developing products, solutions and partnerships that span a wide spectrum of industries, such as power generation, distribution grids, buildings and transportations systems.

The company is working with partners, utilities, universities, governments, building management companies and leaders in the IT industry to accelerate development of energy-smart solutions for growing cities. More energy-efficient cities are among the best opportunities to provide sustainable economic growth and quality of life in the long term.

Microsoft's Smart Energy Reference Architecture also helps utilities develop an ecosystem where thousands of smart devices can seamlessly plug into the grid with common standards and interoperability framework.

Technology is also providing a greater understanding of the resources and systems we depend on. Citizens, educators and scientists are benefiting from the power of information with Microsoft tools such as Worldwide Telescope and Eye On Earth. Microsoft Research has provided individuals a way to estimate the power consumption of their computers through Joulemeter. Microsoft has joined with several companies and organizations to launch the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, an organization that provides guidance to individuals and businesses on using industry innovations and best practices to improve energy efficiency and power management.

Possibilities for energy savings are also emerging with cloud computing. A recent study found that customers can reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions on a per-user basis by running common business applications in the cloud versus running the applications in their own data centers.

Visit www.microsoft-hohm.com.