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Emerson Network Power Survey Indicates Budget, Power Requirements, Availability Top Concerns In Hospital’s

Emerson Network Power Survey Indicates Budget, Power Requirements, Availability Top Concerns In Hospital’s IT Infrastructure in North America

Columbus, Ohio [November 3, 2010] – Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson (NYSE: EMR) and the global leader in enabling Business-Critical Continuity™, today announced results of its 2010 survey on IT and facility issues inside the hospital. The survey results, which include responses from North America-based professionals in IT management/IT operations, data center management and facilities management, reported budget, power requirements and availability as top concerns. The findings reinforce that, given the mission-critical nature of healthcare IT, hospitals are increasingly dependent on technology to operate and serve patients.

The survey results also indicated a correlation between the importance of power and cooling infrastructure and the reliance on IT systems, with more than half of respondents upgrading their healthcare facility’s power and cooling infrastructure when implementing new technologies like Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)/network communications and picture archiving and communication systems (PACS).

While the importance of uninterruptible power is well understood in data centers and network closets, the survey results suggest that the same cannot be said for the hospital itself. In instances where IT usage comes to the point of care, more than one-half of patient rooms are not supported by any uninterruptible power source. Additionally, just 28 percent of operating rooms have emergency power receptacles serviced through an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). This lack of protection makes critical patient data vulnerable to downtime as there is no ride-through until the hospital’s emergency generators can assume the critical load.
“With shrinking IT budgets and rising demand for computing capacity, it’s not surprising that healthcare IT and facilities professionals cited budget, power requirements and availability as top concerns inside the hospital,” said Jeff Sturgeon, vice president, marketing and solutions, Emerson Network Power’s Liebert products business in North America. “Although it is a relief to know that those in the healthcare industry recognize the relationship between power and cooling infrastructure and IT system availability, the lack of hospital-wide power protection in the OR and patient rooms is concerning. Patient records in the data center may remain available and protected during a utility outage, but without extending protection into the hospital, medical personnel will not have access to vital data while hospital-based IT devices are temporarily down.”

Regarding downtime, 32 percent of those surveyed had experienced unplanned downtime of their IT systems while 29 percent responded that their data centers did not deploy redundant power systems or didn’t know what type of distribution strategy was being used. This suggests that, despite an increased reliance on IT, there is a need for increasing awareness of infrastructure technologies and strategies.

The majority of respondents also cited major changes and expansion on the horizon, despite the economic recession. In the next 24 months, 60 percent indicated they plan to add more server and storage capacity in their hospital data centers, while more than half are planning to update or expand IT infrastructure within an existing hospital. Twenty-seven percent plan to expand the existing hospital, while 15 percent plan to build a new facility.

Although a number of respondents identified application services that are currently being evaluated for moving into internal or external cloud environments, security is a top concern. Web servers and web-based applications have the second highest cloud adoption rate at 49 percent (13 percent is specified as internal cloud), among respondents, and 50 percent of respondents plan to implement disaster recovery/backup-as-a-service on an internal or external cloud. Forty-nine percent of respondents mentioned a concern with security and cloud computing, likely due to the sensitive nature of a hospital’s business and regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

For more information on Liebert technologies and services from Emerson Network Power, visit www.Liebert.com.

Emerson Network Power Introduces Liebert XDS System to Bring Data Center Cooling Directly to the Server

Emerson Network Power Introduces Liebert XDS System to Bring Data Center Cooling Directly to the Server

Columbus, Ohio [October 26, 2010] – With energy costs soaring, reducing the energy consumption of data center cooling systems is becoming as critical as maintaining reliable cooling for high-density IT environments. With that in mind, Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson (NYSE: EMR) and the global leader in enabling Business-Critical Continuity™, today introduced the Liebert XDS server cooling system, a breakthrough direct server cooling technology that can provide a flexible, reliable and energy-efficient cooling solution for high-density IT systems.

Available in North America, Central and Latin America, the Liebert XDS from Emerson Network Power brings refrigerant-based cooling directly to the server with a revolutionary technology that eliminates both cooling system and server fans. The result is silent, highly energy-efficient cooling system that exceeds the performance of the best cooling solutions on the market.

“The Liebert XDS is a major step forward in the evolution of data center cooling. Cooling is now positioned at the most efficient spot – at the server that generates the heat,” said Steve Madara, vice president and general manager of the Liebert precision cooling business of Emerson Network Power in North America. “Heat is stopped at the source, so no additional heat is expelled to the room from the rack. This significantly minimizes the energy required for data center cooling. It has the possibility to reduce the total data center cooling energy to less than the energy consumed by the server fans that are removed.

“As a result, the Liebert XDS has the potential to fundamentally simplify the design of data centers,” Madara said. “With the elimination of the fans, data center managers no longer need to worry about managing airflow in the data center or employing a hot-aisle/cold-aisle configuration.”

Emerson Network Power has been leading the industry movement toward high-density cooling since the introduction in 2003 of the Liebert XD system, which brought high-efficiency cooling to racks. More recently, the organization pioneered intelligent cold aisle containment and, in 2009, introduced the Liebert XDR rear door heat exchanger, which eliminated cooling system fans by using server fans to provide airflow through the rack. Now, with the Liebert XDS, neither server nor cooling fans are required.

The Liebert XDS consists of a standard-sized IT rack equipped with patent-pending cold plate server cooling technology from Emerson’s technology partner, Clustered Systems. The cooling plates are configured to use refrigerant supplied by a Liebert XDP refrigerant pumping unit.

Heat generated by the server is transferred through heat risers to the server housing, then through the thermal interface material lining the cover, and finally transferred to a cooling plate, which uses refrigerant-filled microchannel tubing to absorb the heat, eliminating the need to expel air from the rack and into the data center. The system cools a full range of rack capacities up to 40 kW and saves a projected 80 percent over room-based cooling system costs.

During recent independent testing by Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, the Liebert XDS was named the most energy-efficient solution tested, effectively winning the Chill-Off 2 event. Organized by Data Center Pulse and sponsored by Silicon Valley Leadership Group, the event tested the energy efficiency of vendor cooling products in the same data center environment.

Lawrence Berkeley’s test results showed the Liebert XDS uses significantly less energy than current cooling systems employed today. As part of its performance during the test, it improved energy efficiency by 14 percent compared to current industry-leading refrigerant-based products involved in the test. In fact, the amount of energy saved by the removal of the server fans can be greater than the total amount of energy it takes to power the Liebert XDS.

Test results point out four key energy efficiency advantages of the Liebert XDS.

Energy is saved because server chassis-level fans can be removed.
Fans to move the hot server exhaust air through heat exchangers are eliminated.
Cooling fluid pumping energy at the rack is minimized because the liquid refrigerant pressure drop is less than water.
Warmer chilled water temperatures can be used, allowing significant energy savings. The possibility also exists to eliminate the chiller of the cooling system.
“The Liebert XDS high-efficiency solution fits perfectly into high-density environments and is ideal for data center managers updating existing Liebert XD systems, undertaking consolidation efforts or building new data centers,” Madara said. “The high-efficiency solution actually consumes less power than 100 percent free-cooling that uses outside air, without any risks of limited operating hours.”

The Liebert XDS is part of the modular Liebert XD system, which is a broad range of pumped-refrigerant, energy-efficient cooling solutions designed to flexibly support high-heat-density rack applications. Unlike other liquid-cooled systems, there are no changes or barriers to how the various components in the unit are accessed. It uses standard 1U servers with modifications to the heat sinks and still allows the servers to be removed without complicated connections. The Liebert XDS is available in 42U and 45U versions and features 35 and 36 1U server slots with cooling plates designated for each slot. One single connection to the rack supports cooling plates for all internal servers.

For more information on the Liebert XDS, or other Liebert technologies and services from Emerson Network Power, visit www.Liebert.com.

Emerson Network Power, Ponemon Institute Release First of Two-Part National Report

Emerson Network Power, Ponemon Institute Release First of Two-Part National Report on Data Center Downtime
U.S.-based report points to lack of resources needed to ensure availability, response

Columbus, Ohio [October 13, 2010] – Despite the fact that 95 percent of companies experienced an unplanned data center outage in the past two years, most identify inadequate practices and investments as factors keeping them from reducing or responding to those outages appropriately. Those were among the findings of a new Ponemon Institute survey of U.S.-based data center professionals. Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson (NYSE: EMR) and the global leader in enabling Business-Critical Continuity™, sponsored the survey and today released a report on the results.

The report analyzes survey responses from more than 450 U.S.-based professionals involved in data center operations and focused on the root causes and frequency of data center downtime. Respondents most frequently cited uninterruptible power supply (UPS) battery failure (65 percent), exceeding UPS capacity (53 percent), accidental emergency power off (EPO)/human error (51 percent) and UPS equipment failure (49 percent) as the causes of unplanned data center outages.

The results indicate that while nearly all of the respondents experienced both primary utility power loss and unplanned data center outages, a lack of resources kept them from reducing or responding to outages as they would have liked. Sixty-five percent of respondents are from organizations whose business model is dependent upon the data center to generate revenue and conduct ecommerce, and 51 percent believe every application in the data center is mission critical. However, 59 percent of respondents say the risk of an unplanned outage has increased as a result of cost constraints inside the data center, 57 percent believe all or most of the unplanned outages could have been prevented, and less than half (42 percent) believe senior management fully supports their efforts to prevent and manage unplanned outages. Additionally, only 37 percent agree there are ample resources to bring their data center up and running if there is an unplanned outage and only 32 percent agree they utilize all best practices in data center design and redundancy to maximize availability.

“As computing demands and energy costs continue to rise amidst shrinking IT budgets, companies are seeking tactics – like cutting energy consumption – to cut costs inside the data center. This has led to an increased risk of unplanned downtime, with companies not fully realizing the impact these outages have on their operations,” said Peter Panfil, vice president and general manager, Emerson Network Power’s AC Power business in North America. “High-profile data center outages have proven that even momentary downtime can result not only in lost revenue in terms of operational time and out-of-pocket costs to repair damaged equipment, but also reputation damage that may threaten existing and future business opportunities.”

Regarding the frequency of outages, respondents experienced 2.5 complete data center outages over the past two years. Partial data center outages, or those limited to certain racks, occurred 6.8 times in the same timeframe. The estimated number of device-level outages, or those limited to individual servers, was the highest at 11.3.

The survey and report also point to a difference in perception between senior-level and rank-and-file respondents regarding data center outages. Sixty percent of senior-level respondents feel senior management fully supports efforts to prevent and manage unplanned outages, compared to 40 percent of supervisor-level employees and below. Senior-level and rank-and-file respondents also disagreed regarding how frequently their facilities experienced downtime, with 56 percent of the senior-level respondents agreeing that unplanned outages do not happen frequently, while just 45 percent of rank-and-file respondents agreed to the same statement.

“When you consider that downtime can potentially cost data centers thousands of dollars per minute, our survey shows a serious disconnect between senior-level employees and those in the data center trenches,” said Larry Ponemon, Ph.D., chairman and founder, the Ponemon Institute. “This sets up a challenge for data center management to justify to senior leadership the need to implement data center systems and best practices that increase availability and ensure the functioning of mission-critical applications. It’s imperative that these two groups be on the same page in terms of the severity of the problem and potential solutions.”

The first in a two-part series, full details of this survey and report are available online. The final report, timed for release in fall 2010, will conclude with detailed information on quantifying the cost of downtime in the data center.

For more information on Liebert technologies and services from Emerson Network Power, visit www.Liebert.com.