Emerson to Consolidate Data Centers

Emerson Network Power will consolidate 100 data centers around the world into four facilities, including a new data center in St. Louis that will showcase the company's cooling technologies, the company said this week. Emerson will also build new facilities in Marshalltown, Iowa; Singapore and a location in "Western Europe," according to local media.

The new 35,000 square foot facility in the St. Louis area will be a testbed and demo center for Emerson's latest technologies, according to company spokesman Steve Hassell. "We want this St. Louis center to be not only a facility that runs the IT part of it but also to really be a showcase for Emerson products, and really the thought leadership that we've put into this area," Hassell said.

Based on its plans for the data center architecture and technology infrastructure, Emerson said it anticipates the new St. Louis facility will receive LEED Silver Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The facility will have one of the largest roof-top solar arrays used by a data center, the company said, which will provide 100 kW power to the IT load. The data center, which is scheduled to open in summer 2009, will include three layers of redundancy, dual utility feeds, redundant UPS protection and onsite generators.
Data center consolidation has been a major trend for large technology companies, allowing them to retire older facilities that can't support the power and cooling requirements of high-density computing. Intel (INTC) is consolidating 133 data centers worldwide into just eight high-density facilities with a total of 300,000 square feet. HP (HPQ) is retiring dozens of its 85 data centers as it consolidates its IT infrastructure into six new data centers, two apiece in Atlanta, Austin and Houston.

When the new Emerson complex is completed, St. Louis will be home to high-tech testbeds for two of the largest cooling vendors. Last year Schneider Electric, the parent of APC, opened the Schneider Technology Center in O'Falllon, Missouri.