I met with Phillip Petersen of Adinfa at a Green Data Center (what an oxymoron) event recently and he briefed me on the progress he had been making with his product – InSite that does real time power monitoring for Data Centers. He told me that they had really started to get some traction, real life big name EMEA customers and a deal with an Incubator to help drive the business. So they have a product that works and is in a hot space, happy reference-able customers, a strong management team, revenues and are ready to grow given some cash. Are you an Angel Investor with an appetite for an ethical investment – talk to Phillip  (contact details on the Adinfa Website.

Here is what Phillip has to say:

Computer data centres consume 2% of all electricity and are responsible for the same level of carbon emissions as the airline industry. AdInfa’s energy monitoring and analysis software enables data centre managers to monitor energy consumption and cut costs by up to 30%, as well as identify spare capacity and reduce carbon emissions. AdInfa has revenues and customers including Equinix and Tiscali.
 
Problem
The UK has 12,500 small to medium sized data centres and there are 250,000 data centres worldwide. Data centres in Europe consume £4billion of electricity per year and consume 2% of all the electricity generated. This amount will double by 2012 unless there is significant improvement in utilisation efficiency. Servers are usually left running even if not needed and there is little or no monitoring of energy in data centres. However, the new Climate Change Act in UK will introduce the Carbon Reduction Commitment forcing data centre owners to monitor their energy use. Managing energy consumption is therefore a key priority for CEOs and CIOs
 
Product
InSite provides monitoring of real-time power and CO2 data for facility managers. InSite gathers information from networked equipment and third party management systems (captured at any level – device, rack, room, data centre, building, campus etc.) and presents it in an interactive report. 

InSite is vendor-independent and can capture data from a range of power monitoring devices in the data centre and report centrally via a single web-based portal. The software can also report on service levels and availability. Insite can also integrate with third party systems such as building management and asset management databases, InSite therefore brings together IT and Facilities at the business level enabling improved management decision making.

InSite’s user interface has been designed with customers such as Equinix and Tiscali and is easy to use by both technical staff and business executives – a key differentiator from competing ‘legacy’ network and systems management solutions which are technical, over-complicated and have a high cost of ownership.
 
Customers
AdInfa has customers, including Equinix, Tiscali and a global communications equipment vendor, and a growing pipeline of new business.
 
Team
Philip Petersen (CEO) has 20+ years experience in IT, general management and sales roles with firms such as Ascom, APC and NTL. http://www.linkedin.com/in/philippetersen

Tim Heywood (Marketing & Product Director) has 20+ years experience in product management and strategy, gained at Lloyds Bank, Andersen Consulting and Micromuse. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/165/b8a

Craig Waddington (founder and CTO) is a software development and telecoms expert with 12+ years experience in companies such as Nortel, Telewest, WorldCom and NEC. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/3/175/76b