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Power Assure Raises $2.5 Million for Data Center Energy Management

Power Assure, Inc., a developer of power management solutions for data centers, recently announced it has completed its Series A round of funding, raising $2.5 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and individual investors. The company also announced its new executive team and members of the Board of Directors. Power Assure claims its software solution is unique among competitive offerings in that it goes beyond simple power monitoring of data centers to actively manage server capacity to match application load.

Power Assure develops and delivers business automation software that reportedly reduces energy use and carbon emissions by an average of 50% in commercial, corporate, and government data centers. The company says that, unlike other offerings that are rule or time- based, Power Assure dynamically manages server capacity based on a sophisticated calculation engine's processing of extensive real-time data. The company has developed patent-pending algorithms for calculating the optimum number of servers required at any time to maintain Service Level Agreements while shutting down excess capacity. Leveraging its business automation platform, Power Assure automates a customer's own procedures for the turning off and bringing up of servers, ensuring smooth transitions and no downtime. The company says it has completed initial installations for revenue, and the platform is undergoing further trials at a number of customer sites.

"Data center power consumption is the prime pain point for data center operators, representing over $10 billion in annual energy expenditures in the US alone and growing at over 12% per year," said Josh Raffaelli of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. "The industry's energy intensity and corresponding carbon footprint in a quickly shifting regulatory environment makes data center energy efficiency mission critical. We are very impressed with Power Assure's innovative software platform and the savings the company's solution is producing."

In addition, Power Assure announced its new management team, including Brad Wurtz, CEO; Clemens Pfeiffer, Founder and CTO; Tom Carlson, CFO; and Patti Zullo, vice president of sales. Mr. Wurtz spent 10 years with Cisco Systems, where he served as vice president and general manager of the company's carrier packet voice business and earlier as vice president and general manager of Cisco's multi- service switching business (formerly Stratacom). Before co-founding Power Assure, Mr. Pfeiffer served as founder, president and CEO for 10 years at International SoftDevices Corporation and earlier served as chief software architect for Hewlett Packard where he helped launch the company's software business.