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Racktivity Raises $8 Million, Opens U.S. Office

Racktivity, which makes intelligent power distribution units, said today that it has raised $8 million in funding and relocated its headquarters office to Redwood City, Calif.

The data center energy management field continues to attract new players and venture capital investment. Racktivity said today that it has raised $8 million in funding and relocated its headquarters office to Redwood City, Calif..

Racktivity makes hardware and software for power distribution units (PDUs). The company was founded in Ghent, Belgium and launched its product line in Europe earlier this year. It will begin selling its products in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2011. That expansion will be backed by an $8 million Series B round of financing led by Partech International, with the participation of existing investor Big Bang Ventures.

Racktivity's Rack Controller PDU integrates an energy and uptime management software platform. The company says its "smart" PDU can measure and control power at the outlet level for each piece of IT equipment in the data center,  providing dynamic power distribution and management. Racktivity products are being used in European data centers operated by Combell, Terremark Europe and Zenith Infotech.

Racktivity founder and chief technology officer Wilbert Ingels was previously a senior vice president of European operations for managed hosting provider Terremark. The company's new VP of sales, Ed Sternbenc, has experience in sales leadership positions at Modius and Nimsoft.

“Racktivity’s management team has a well-established track record of innovating, building and growing successful companies," said Nicolas El Baze, a general partner at Partech International. "We believe the team’s compelling vision for the next-generation power distribution framework brings new levels of energy savings and uptime improvements to data centers."

"We focus on the physical layer of the cloud, combining advanced PDUs with an open and extensible software platform to reduce energy consumption and improve uptime by measuring and managing their power use —while seamlessly integrating with data center applications," said Marco DeMiroz, president and CEO of Racktivity

One of the early adopters of Racktivity products is Belgian hosting company Combell. "By using the Rack Controller, we have lowered our total cost of ownership by 65 percent and no longer need to purchase three devices to do the same thing—with the added benefit of much lower power consumption," said Benjamin Jacobs, Combell CTO.

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