Vigilent, a company that provides intelligent energy management systems for data centers, telecommunications facilities and large buildings, has raised $6.7 million in investments led by Accel Partners. This investment is part of Accel’s new $100 million Big Data fund. Angel investors including Gaurav Garg and Peter Wagner also participated in this round.
The startup’s services help data centers with energy efficiency. As Vigilent’s CEO Mark Housley explains, one of the biggest challenges companies face when managing data centers is cooling. In fact, he says cooling accounts for 50 percent of data center energy costs, and downtime (caused by cooling disruptions) can cost as much as $5,600 per minute for a company.
Vigilent equips data centers with wireless sensors for real-time data collection. The data feeds into a server which determines if/where decreases or increases in cooling are required, and then sends a signal to the correct air conditioner, turning it on or off or adjusting the variable fan speed accordingly.
Basically, Vigilent uses the power of Big Analytics to optimize energy management in data centers and telco central offices. The system analyzes Big Data from hundreds to thousands of wireless sensors deployed throughout a single data center or portfolio-wide, to deliver real-time information informing an artificial intelligence engine at the core of the Vigilent system.
This provides constant updates to dynamically control cooling and air handling resources. The system adapts and balances resources to meet demand delivering reduced energy costs, and more. Because of the massive amount of historical data collected, Vigilent also aims to detect subtle correlations further down the long tail of historic data that would otherwise go unnoticed.
“Vigilent has demonstrated a unique ability to harness data center energy-use while providing actionable, non-intuitive operational energy management insights through Big Data analytics,” said Accel partner Rich Wong. “With proven technology and a significant track record with Fortune 50 companies, we believe Vigilent will have a transformative effect on energy efficiency in critical building infrastructure.”
The company, which has seen 90 deployments throughout the U.S., Canada and Japan, is profitable, and on track to double revenues again this year. Housely says Vigilent operated energy management solutions for Verizon and reduced cooling costs by 40 to 50 percent. Other clients include Akamai, Nttdocomo, and NTT Communications.
The new funding will be used for product development, working capital and to expand further into Europe and Asia.
The company faces competition from Synapsense.
