Emerson Combines Avocent, Aperture

Emerson Network Power (EMR) is combining its Aperture and new Avocent businesses as a new division focused on helping data center customers better manage their infrastructure, the company said today. The move consolidates two of the company’s recent acquisitions in the data center management sector. Emerson acquired Aperture in February 2008 and bought Avocent for $1.2 billion in a deal announced in October 2009.

The new division will be headquartered in Huntsville, Ala., and combines Avocent’s management systems division – which offers access and control of the physical aspects of network devices and servers – with Aperture’s capacity planning software. The new division will be led by President Stephen C. Hassell, who previously served as Emerson Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) since 2004.

Roundup: Level 3, Akamai, Liebert

Here’s a roundup of news announcements from the data center and hosting industry:

• Akamai Reports Third Quarter 2009 Results. Wednesday Akamai released financial results for the period ending September 30, 2009.  Revenue was up 5% year over year at $206.5 million and cash flow from operations up 13% year over year at $105.2 million. “Our results demonstrated our ability to leverage the Company’s unique cost structure and scale while improving performance and reliability for our enterprise-class customers,” said CEO Paul Sagan. During the third quarter the company repurchased approximately 2 million shares of common stock for $36.2 million at an average price of $18.41 per share.  Customers with recurring contracts at the end of the third quarter increased to a record 3,031; an 8% increase year over year.  It was also reported that Akamai is conducting an internal probe on insider trading after an unnamed executive was implicated in a massive insider trading scandal.  No Akamai official has yet been named or charged in the case.
• New Next Generation Data Wales facility. European data center specialist Next Generation Data announced the opening of a $326 million data center in Wales, U.K. Known as NGD Europe, it is the largest of its kind in the U.K. and one of the largest in Europe. The 700,000 square foot space was formerly a semiconductor plant and can be divided into multiple areas for individual clients. Several blue-chip companies have signed long-term contracts and Next Generation Data is offering a range of wholesale space-only contracts to large companies. NGD Europe has numerous security features, such as prison grade perimeter fencing, biometric recognition and ex-special forces security guards, bomb-proof glass and triple-skinned walls.

Emerson Acquires Avocent in $1.2B Deal

Emerson (EMR) will acquire infrastructure management specialist Avocent Corporation (AVCT) for $1.2 billion in a deal that highlights the growing focus on tools to help data center operators track and manage the energy efficiency of their facilities. Avocent’s board unanimously endorsed Emerson’s all-cash tender offer of $25 per share, the companies said this morning. Shares of Avocent closed Monday at $20.52.

Emerson is a leading vendor of power and cooling technologies for the data center. The acquisition of Avocent allows Emerson to continue to enhance its offerings for tracking and managing data center assets, following on last year’s purchase of Aperture, which makes capacity planning software. Emerson’s data center-related revenues were approximately $2.6 billion in fiscal 2008.

“Combining Avocent’s technologies, relationships and installed base with Emerson’s power and cooling presence allows us to offer a more compelling solution to our data center customers’ most pressing challenge – energy efficiency,” said David N. Farr, Emerson chairman, CEO and president. “It furthers our customers’ ability to better manage reliability, availability and lifecycle costs through a simple yet comprehensive view of the complete data center physical infrastructure.”

Roundup: Michigan Cloud, IBM’s Green Degree

Here’s a roundup of some of some of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:

• Michigan plans Government cloud. Michigan CIO Ken Theis details the plans that the state has toward building a massive data center designed to provide cloud computing services to state agencies, cities, counties and schools across the state.  Government Technology magazine interviews Theis, who left General Motors 11 years ago to join state government. Theis states that it could potentially be a 80,000 to 100,000 square foot facility and break ground in October 2010.  The goal is to build a cloud to provide application hosting and managed services not only for the state government, but for the public-sector as well.  Data center consolidation efforts to date by Michigan have closed 35 of 38 facilities and repurposed nearly half of its existing IT equipment.  These efforts have saved more than $19 million and reclaimed 30,000 square feet of office space, according to the state.  Michigan will use American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds and other sources in an effort to make the new data center as green as possible.  Theis said ”No private-sector CIO wants to offshore, but right now there’s not really a good alternative. And they have the same problem now as government does: They don’t have any money.”
• Verari FOREST container selected by Qualcomm. Verari Systems announced Tuesday that Qualcomm has selected their second-generation FOREST container solution for their most recent data center expansion.  Qualcomm vice president of Information Technology Brian Baker said “When we evaluated the cost efficiencies of operating a container versus a traditional data center, it became a natural step for us to deploy one.”  Verari’s second-generation container recently won the Uptime Institute’s 2009 Green Enterprise IT award for Energy Efficient Products: Facilities.  The Verari FOREST container houses up to 2,880 servers or 26 Petabytes of storage and the company says it can be deployed at about 50% of the capital and operating expense of traditional brick-and-mortar data centers.

Emerson Looks to a Solar Future

Emerson Network Power has installed this 7,800 square foot solar array on the roof of its new St. Louis data center.

Perched atop Emerson’s new data center is a 100-kilowatt solar panel array, which is visible across the company’s corporate campus in St. Louis. That’s one of the reasons for its high-profile location. “You can see this array from around the campus,” said Keith Gislason, an IT strategic planner for Emerson who directed the project. “It’s about the message, too.”

Solar power has had difficulty gaining traction in the data center industry due to cost and capacity challenges. But Emerson took a forward-looking approach for its $50 million facility, and sought to craft a design that could demonstrate the potential for solar in the data center. Steve Hassell, Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Emerson, calls the St. Louis solar array ”an aspirational project.”

“The solar component was something we used almost as an experiment to learn the pros and cons,” said Hassell. “This is the way the world is going, and it’s important for us to have a real-world experience with this technology.”

550 Solar Panels
Emerson’s 7,800 square foot rooftop installation includes more than 550 solar panels, and is the largest solar array in the state of Missouri. Even so, at peak output it will supply about 16 percent of the data center’s power requirements, and Emerson expects it will take 20 years of operation to fully recover its investment.  

Video: Emerson’s St. Louis Data Center

Emerson Network Power has opened its new flagship data center at its headquarters in St. Louis, which showcases the company’s equipment and energy efficiency strategies. The facility features a rooftop solar array that will provide 100 kw of supplemental power, a high-voltage power distribution system using 240 volt power instead of 208 volt and Liebert XD high-density overhead cooling units,and follows Emerson’s Energy Logic guidelines throughout its design. The new data center is part of a broader consolidation in which the company will shift workloads from 100 sites into just four data centers. Emerson, which expects the facility to gain LEED Gold certification, will unveil its new St. Louis data center today and tomorrow in presentations for press and analysts. Here’s a 5-minute video that will introduce the new facility.

For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

Survey: Rack Density Heading Higher

Many new data centers will be built to support power densities of between 10 kW and 20 kW per rack, significantly higher than the 7.4 kW average supported by current facilities, according to a new survey of data center operators released today by Emerson Network Power (EMR). Among the reasons cited for designing for higher density data centers were the need to save facility space, support blade servers and reduce energy costs.

The findings were among the data points from Emerson’s bi-annual survey of its Data Center Users Group (DCUG), which polls more than 120 data center, facility and IT managers shared information about future plans for their data centers. The survey results were previewed earlier this month during the two-day DCUG spring conference in Washington, D.C.

Electronic Medical Records and Data Centers

The Obama administration wants health care providers to transition to a paperless records system, which will force hospitals and doctor’s offices to assess whether their data centers are prepared for the demands of electronic medical records. Emerson Network Power worked with BayCare Health System, which operates nine hospitals in the Tampa Bay area, during the organization’s seven-year transition to electronic records. In this video, Peter Panfil, vice president and GM for Liebert AC Power Business, discusses how a shift to electronic records creates additional challenges and requirements in IT infrastructure. This video runs about 2 minutes, 45 seconds.

For more about Emerson, see our Emerson Network Power Channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

Emerson Appoints Lee as CTO

Emerson Network Power (EMR) has appointed Victor Lee chief technology officer to guide technology innovation, the company said today. Lee will oversee research units developing technologies to address key challenges faced by Emerson’s many customers operating mission-critical data centers.

“As a global technology leader, it is imperative that Emerson Network Power continues to challenge itself and the market to develop innovative technologies that make our customers’ lives easier and businesses more competitive,” Lee said.