Arch Rock moves into data center market

Arch Rock's technology at work.

Energy monitoring firm Arch Rock is expanding its reach into the realm of data centers with a new version of its Energy Optimizer system, the company announced in October.

Thus far, the four-year-old San Francisco-based company has been primarily focused on commercial and light industrial buildings. Its Internet Protocol-based system uses wireless sensors to track and report a building’s energy use, and has been adopted by about a dozen customers since its launch in mid-2009. Energy Optimizer-Data Center Edition will also use a wireless sensor network to identify sources of energy waste, such as excess heating and cooling.

With temperature, air quality and humidity parameters required for smooth operations, data centers are a prime target for energy efficiency measures. Businesses can no longer rely on overdimensioning and overcooling their data centers, and instead must optimize their equipment and energy use, Arch Rock CEO Roland Acra says.

Energy Optimizer, which can be purchased or delivered on a subscription basis, delivers information through a series of dashboards illustrating temperature, humidity, energy use and performance indicators, and could result in energy savings of up to 40 percent, Acra says.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has predicted that by 2011 data center energy consumption will have doubled what it was in 2006. Meanwhile, a host of companies—from startups Sentilla and SynapSense, to industry giants such as Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) and IBM (NYSE: IBM)—are marketing ways to reduce data center power use.