SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 4, 2007 – Cassatt® Corporation today announced a breakthrough technology that safely and intelligently powers servers off when they are not needed or idle.  This technology is the cornerstone of Cassatt’s new strategy for helping customers move toward greener data centers.

Electricity and cooling costs for large data centers – the corporate facilities that house hundreds or thousands of computer servers as well as storage equipment and networking gear – are outstripping all other operational and equipment costs, chiefly because servers are powered on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, whether or not they are being used.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported last month that data centers are consuming up to 1.5 percent of all the electricity generated in the U.S.

Cassatt Active Power Management™ technology, controlled by policies set by administrators and optimized automatically, continually optimizes power consumption based on the time of day, demand, curtailments imposed by power companies, or other facilities-based events.  In early tests with Active Power Management, customers have experienced up to 50 percent reduction in their power usage, simply by allowing Active Power Management to turn off servers when idle, and then confirm a successful power-up when they’re needed again.     

“Cassatt is in an ideal position to help customers reduce energy consumption in their data centers,” said Bill Coleman, chairman and CEO of Cassatt.  “Data centers have been big energy wasters because they operate on a one-application-per-server principle to ensure 100 percent uptime during peak usage, resulting in massively over-provisioned systems constantly running at full power even when they’re not needed.  Now customers can have 100 percent uptime — and cut their energy costs nearly in half.”

Cassatt Active Power Management technology is based on a sophisticated policy engine that takes into account server priorities and needs, server interrelationships, application dependencies and relationships, and individual server power consumption in deciding when to power-down machines. It takes into account variables such as peak- and off-peak power schedules, time-of-day, and emergencies such as “demand curtailment” mandates from power companies to reduce electrical consumption – for example, on hot summer weekdays. The technology determines which servers to power down, and for how long, and then safely handles application requirements before turning them off.  As servers are needed again, it applies the same logic and priorities to power those servers back on as appropriate.

The Cassatt Active Power Management technology will be available in an easy-to-adopt and easy-to-install line of products with feature sets that align with customers’ strategies to run increasingly green data centers.  Cassatt will announce more details about its green data center product line later this month.  The company is currently working on the products with early adopter customers, including Brocade.

Source: www.cassatt.com