IO Intelligent Control Platform More Energy Efficient in Arizona Installation

PHOENIX, Aug. 20, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- IO, a global leader in software-defined data centers, today announced that a third-party evaluation by Arizona Public Service (APS) showed that a modular data center technology installation in IO's Phoenix facility has achieved 19% energy cost savings quantified by its improved Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) ratings. APS findings confirmed that IO's manufactured, modular approach at this location is more efficient than the traditional raised-floor data center environment.

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In its third-party evaluation, APS analyzed 12 months of data from both IO.Anywhere^® modules and the traditional build-out located at the IO Phoenix data center. APS monitored PUE for calendar year 2012 and found the Data Center 1.0 (traditional build-out environment) had a PUE of 1.73, while the Data Center 2.0 (IO.Anywhere modular data center environment) had a PUE of 1.41, both well below the industry average. That efficiency gain translates into an annual savings of $200,000 per MW of average IT power within the IO.Anywhere modular build-out. 

PUE is an industry measurement of how efficiently a data center uses power; specifically, how much of the power is actually used by the computing equipment (in contrast to cooling and other overhead). Uptime Institute has placed the global average PUE of 1.8-1.9 for traditionally designed data centers (Data Center 1.0) and benchmark studies in Asian markets have shown PUEs over 2.0.

"Our calculations did show that the IO.Anywhere modular data center uses less energy than a traditional data center build-out, at least in the case of this IO data center," said Wayne Dobberpuhl, APS Energy Efficiency Program Manager. "Moving forward, we are working with IO to establish the right baseline for assessing the appropriate rebate for this efficiency work under our Solutions for Business program."

"The portion of PUE above 1.0 denotes energy not going to IT equipment, and that's where efficiencies can be found. We've reduced this portion from 0.73 down to 0.41 in our switch to the IO.Anywhere modular data center, which we recognize as a 44% reduction in energy spent on infrastructure versus primary business applications," said Patrick Flynn, Lead Sustainability Strategist, IO.

He continued: "We recognize that PUE has an important place in customer assessments of a data center's cost effectiveness and environmental sustainability.  Part of our job at IO, therefore, is to validate PUE in actual deployments today, and to continually improve data center performance. Another part of our job, one we are working on, is to evolve the calculation of the PUE metric itself, so that it becomes a more meaningful tool for business."

About the APS Third-Party Evaluation

IO Phoenix utilizes both traditional and modular data center environments, providing a unique position to partner with APS on a comparative PUE evaluation. The following parameters were put in place, so APS and IO could create an 'apples to apples' comparison rather than comparing disparate geographic locations with different operations staff. The local temperatures, humidity, IT load and operating practices can affect PUE and it would be misleading to compare PUEs among different data center locations. The APS calculation measured energy efficiency of the IO real-world production data center running a mix of enterprise equipment and applications – not specialized, single purpose environments.

• Same Geography. All numbers from this report come out IO Phoenix, which contains traditional 1.0 and modular 2.0 data centers.
• Same Chiller Plant. Shared chiller plant – same efficiency for both environments.
• Same Building, Same Envelope. The IO.Anywhere modules are housed in a data center, though not all of our deployments have this "nested" scenario
• Same Operator. IO operations staff monitor and maintain both environments on behalf of customers and IO.
• Utilization: Current utilization of a 200 kW IO.Anywhere data module was used to project annual savings

About APS

APS, Arizona's largest and longest-serving electricity utility, serves more than 1.1 million customers in 11 of the state's 15 counties. With headquarters in Phoenix, APS is the principal subsidiary of Pinnacle West Capital Corp. (NYSE: PNW).

About IO

IO is a global leader in software-defined data centers and has pioneered the next generation of data center infrastructure technology. IO's integrated hardware and software data center technology platform offers enterprises, governments, and service providers an innovative way to deploy, provision, and optimize data center capacity anywhere in the world. IO technology lowers the total cost of data center ownership compared to traditional data centers, enabling dynamic deployment and intelligent control based on the needs of IT equipment and applications in the data center.

IO, the IO logo, Intelligent Control and all other IO trademarks are owned by IO Data Centers, LLC and its affiliates. © 2013.

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