Racktivity To Provide Power Distribution for Data Center Energy Management in U.S

Racktivity raises $8 million investment to expand power distribution units to U.S.

Belgium-based Racktivity will soon start U.S. sales of its Rack Controller Power Distribution Unit (PDU), a product addressing the increasing need for data center energy management. Ractivity, which has been selling its power distribution unit mainly in the European market up to now, announced earlier this week that it had secured $8 million in a second round of funding, and that it will open a U.S. headquarter in Redwood City, CA. Racktivity has so far received a total of $10 million in funding from investors in Europe and the U.S.

The Racktivity power distribution unit will start shipping in the U.S. sometime in the first quarter of 2011 and is designed to let enterprises more efficiently manage and reduce power consumption and carbon emissions within data centers. Each Racktivity power distribution unit is a horizontal box that slides into a standard data center server rack. The units integrate sophisticated switching, metering, and predictive analytics software technologies that allow data center managers to do real-time monitoring and management of power consumption.

The real-time data generated by the Racktivity power distribution units will allow data center operators to more efficiently balance energy loads and mitigate potential circuit overloads. Importantly, each Racktivity power distribution unit can be programmed to generate local and remote warnings when certain pre-defined energy consumption patterns or thresholds are crossed. The systems allow all event-driven data to be logged and stored for future analytics and forensic analysis purposes.

Racktivity’s planned entry into the U.S. market comes at a time where there is surging interest in green IT and energy efficient data centers. Though data centers have not traditionally been huge power consumers or contributors to carbon emissions, many are becoming a whole lot larger. According to estimates by Subodh Bapat, a former green IT evangelist at Sun, by 2020 some of the largest data centers in the world will consume as much as 50 megawatts of power. Data centers and IT products in general, already account for a substantial and growing portion of the utility costs for most enterprises. In this context, technologies such as the Racktivity power distribution unit will be tapping into an important need.

Ractivity executives have had a track record of success with acquisitions. Founder Kristof De Spiegeleer was the CTO at Q-Layer, acquired by Sun Microsystems last year. He also founded Hostbasket, acquired by Telenet in 2008, Datacenter Technologies, acquired by Veritas in 2005, and Dedigate, acquired by Terremark in 2005. Ractivity's power distribution technology may make the company a tempting acquisition target, but if that is not the chosen route, the company is going to need a lot more than $10 million to be able to survive on its own.