More than ever, companies are transitioning I.T. infrastructure to data centers. According to International Data Corporation (IDC), 13,000 large data centers dot the globe with 7,000 of those centers based in the U.S. alone. Although segment growth stalled during the recession, IDC estimated about $22 billion was spent on new data center development worldwide in 2011 alone.

With the sheer value and scale of cloud computing being leveraged more aggressively, businesses and consumers expect critical data to be stored in, and to be moved to and from, data centers. As a result, I.T. managers pay a premium to provide robust and stable environments for servers and network equipment to ensure up time and performance while juggling rising capital and operating expenses to maintain their competitive place in the market.

One of the largest expenses I.T. managers face is the purchase and maintenance of expensive battery back-up supply (UPS) technology to protect equipment from power disturbances and outages should the data center’s power go down. Increasingly, I.T. professionals are recognizing that—thanks to the redundancy they’ve adopted as a best practice—the chance of losing power at multiple centers simultaneously is near zero and only a minority of equipment actually requires this type of protection.

The lesser known fact is that while data center downtime is extremely low, damaging power disturbances are a very common and costly occurrence. To make matters worse, according to a data center report in 2010, problems with UPS equipment and configuration are the most frequently cited cause of data center outages. Subsequently, there is growing demand to implement a solution to protect electronic assets without the cost, size, and service requirements of a battery-based system.

These statistics demonstrate two trends: data centers continue to grow and companies are spending too much money on electronics protection with UPS technology and the associated, unavoidable costs of configuration, service, replacement, and disposal. Both trends considered, operators must continue to deploy and manage a growing asset-base of electronic equipment while simultaneously establishing a cost-effective power protection strategy that is more practical, manageable, and cost-effective.

Current Technology Choices

Historically, electronics power protection choices have been limited to under-functioning surge protectors for aftermarket consumer use or unwieldy, expensive technologies such as UPS for use by large enterprise systems.

Traditionally, UPS technology has proven to be an effective technical solution for power protection. The technology protects against disturbances by physically isolating electronics from the grid and powering them by battery. However, UPSs are prohibitively expensive to acquire, costly to maintain, and are increasingly difficult and expensive to dispose of when replaced—required every two to four years—bringing about an additional environmental burden these facilities must manage.

Improved Solution

The current protection landscape for enterprise and data center electronics points to a void in available protection technology. Experts are realizing current technologies are limited and that grid events—both inside and outside of data centers—are more complex and frequent than once thought, elevating the need for the development of effective and affordable 21st-century protection for the mass-majority of the world’s electronic assets.

To bridge this gap, Innovolt® has developed an intelligent electronics protection platform that meets this need. Compared to inexpensive surge protection and filtering technologies, this new type of protection is cost-effective and is a meaningful, proven, long-term safeguard for electronics. Similar to UPS systems, the technology provides immunity from grid and line disturbances but with a more functional form-factor and more affordable design.

Innovolt’s patented technology, which resides between the power grid and the equipment being protected, uses a series of patented algorithms and protocols to recognize potential power issues and quickly and intelligently remediates issues before damaging effects occur. The platform has three major components:

1. Measurement and Signature Creation – Monitors and measures details of incoming power to create power signatures, which are profiled in real-time against known disturbances.
2. Predictive Processing – Compares real-time power signatures to profiles known to cause damage to electronics. With millions of potential combinations of profiles and signatures, a central microprocessor system then determines the most effective steps for remediation and activates the Core Protection Circuitry.
3. Core Protection Circuitry – Provides a buffer between a damaging power event, its effects, and the protected electronics. Using a series of internationally patented techniques, this circuitry executes the best-prescribed protection strategy.

Not only is this new technology data-driven, it’s flexible. It can either be placed in front of the electronics as a power-protection device to shield equipment from all power anomalies or integrated into the electronics. The technology is accessible and effective for all electronics, regardless of size, deployment or industry. Innovolt’s electronics protection platform provides the first holistic and intelligent approach to protect and manage electronics, resulting in equipment that performs better, lasts longer, and requires fewer service calls.

In addition, the Innovolt solution provides a data framework that can allow the user to both control the protection profiles to meet the equipment or application needs and collect all power consumption and disturbance data from each device to help the user better manage the facility and assets.

What Does This Mean for Data Centers?

This flexible approach to power protection can easily save millions of dollars in expenses in the construction, configuration, and maintenance of electronic assets in a single enterprise data center. Across an enterprise, the potential savings from both a capital and operating expense standpoint is game changing for I.T. organizations. As such, Innovolt is focused on providing improved, cloud-computing-specific product and technology solutions to benefit the economics of data centers worldwide.