Startup Power Assure Raises $2.5 Million

powerassure

A view of the Power Assure energy management console.

Data center power management startup Power Assure recently announced that it has raised $2.5 million in Series A funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and individual investors. The company also announced its new executive team, led by CEO Brad Wurtz, a veteran of Cisco Systems, and founder and CTO Clemens Pfeiffer. 

Power Assure's software dynamically manages server capacity using a "sophisticated calculation engine's processing of extensive real-time data." The Santa Clara, Calif. company says its software can calculate the ideal number of servers needed to run applications and maintain Service Level Agreements, while automatically shutting down unneeded servers.

"The company has completed initial installations for revenue, and the platform is undergoing further trials at a number of customer sites," Power Assure says. Sun Microsystems hosted demonstrations of Power Assure's power management solutions as part of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group's Chill-Off.

“We are very impressed with Power Assure's innovative software platform and the savings the company's solution is producing," said Josh Raffaelli of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. "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. The industry's energy intensity and corresponding carbon footprint in a quickly shifting regulatory environment makes data center energy efficiency mission critical."

Is there a market for automating the shutdown of idle servers? That was one of the initial selling points (along with cloud management) for software from Cassatt, which struggled to gain traction and ultimately sold its technology to CA. The challenges for Cassatt were complex, and not an ideal reflection of demand for power management software. But the Cassatt experience sugggests that ease of integration will be a key issue for end users, along with lingering questions among some data center managers about whether frequent power cycling will shorten the life of servers and storage equipment.