Warwick-based power management software company Concurrent Thinking has been spun out from Streamline Computing Ltd (Streamline) as part of a £1m investment co-led by the Carbon Trust and the Mercia Fund to drive international growth of its technology for managing large-scale distributed computing environments, which helps cut energy, carbon and cost. Other investors in the company include the management team and Streamline shareholder Midven.
Concurrent Thinking's technology tightly integrates environmental monitoring, power monitoring and control — at both at power distribution unit and server levels — with server and operating system management. This allows data-centre managers to optimise their distributed IT environment: for example, by checking for efficient usage of server resources and automatically powering down or up servers depending on workload.
It also enables users to pin-point problems such as overheating, high power usage or a lack of system resources ‘at a glance.’ The granular level of detail provided for individual servers, PDUs and probes helps users to make intelligent decisions so as to minimise energy consumption and costs, as well as reduce carbon emissions.
Intuitive technology
Due to its scalable design, Concurrent Thinking's technology is said to be suitable for all data centres. However, as it is simple to deploy and highly intuitive, it is ideal for small and medium enterprises which can typically find the cost of the more heavyweight data centre management software suites on the market too high.
"Total annual carbon emissions from the ICT industry now rival those from the aviation industry," said Peter Linthwaite, Managing Partner of CT Investment Partners, which advises Carbon Trust Investments. "Supporting technologies that reduce energy consumption in data centres is a key focus for us.
"Concurrent Thinking's integrated, scalable, easy-to-use technology combines power control with server and operating system management. This results in a significant return on investment for customers as it reduces total cost of ownership, while simultaneously reducing their facility's carbon emissions. Carbon Trust Investments is delighted to be backing a UK business that is poised for rapid growth and will make a meaningful difference to cutting the ICT sector’s carbon emissions."
