Texas start-up Vapor IO, has launched a partnership with Bloom Energy that aims to decrease cost and increase the efficiency.
Bloom operates a manufacturing site in Newark, at the University of Delaware STAR campus.
“At Vapor IO, we are dedicated to revamping today’s data centers and leading the industry towards a more modern, sustainable and energy efficient IT infrastructure,” said Cole Crawford, co-founder and CEO of Vapor IO. “Our partnership with Bloom Energy further enables us to provide this on a global level. We look forward to working closely with their team to bring this innovative offering to market.”
Vapor IO is taking a different approach to data centers. The company says it provides an integrated solution aimed at lower costs of operating a data center through open source hardware and software systems.
A key component for the company is Vapor Chamber, an alternative to server racks that also address heating and cooling. Dealing with heat from servers adds to the expense of operating data centers.
The more efficient Centers could operate in smaller settings that could include urban areas that with the Bloom servers could operate off the grid. Currently, data centers often operate in large complexes, sometimes in suburban or remote locations.
In what might be a related development, Bloom recently disclosed plans for fuel cells that generate far more electricity in the same container, the News Journal reported. “Bloom Boxes are about the size of a parking space.
One driving force, according to published reports, is the Internet of Things that will connect everything from industrial systems to household appliances and even humans. The Internet of Things is expected to result in a sharp increase in demand for data center capacity.
Vapor IO represents a marked contrast to the now dead Data Centers project in Newark that used a large gas-fired power plant next to a massive data centers. A much smaller version of the Data Centers project in Middletown was recently approved in Middletown.
Both projects generated controversy, due to opposition to the gas-fired power plant. Foes came up dire predictions of environmental problems arising from the power plant.
“Our goal of partnering with Vapor IO is to better enable companies around the globe to adopt green data centers,” stated Peter Gross, vice president of mission critical systems at Bloom Energy. “We look forward to working with the Vapor IO team to support cutting edge data center design that helps organizations meet their sustainability goals, while also achieving the reliability and cost competitiveness demanded by the industry today.”
Bloom recently struck a deal with utility and generating giant Exelon that promises to sharply increase the number of Bloom fuel cell installations.
Data Centers have been using Bloom fuel cells to guarantee uninterruptible power.
The joint solution will be available in the first quarter of 2016. Vapor IO is based in Austin, TX, while Bloom is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA in the Silicon Valley.
