Emerson Network Power has announced the creation of a new Thermal Management business to expand the company’s ability to develop and deliver more holistic, next-generation approaches to controlling the data centre environment.

This Thermal Management business includes Emerson Network Power’s existing Liebert precision cooling assets and expertise. It offers technologies and solutions for data centres and IT facilities of all sizes including air, waterside and innovative pumped-refrigerant economisers in addition to state-of-the-art controls and wireless sensors to maximise efficiency.

“With the continuous evolution of the data centre ecosystem and the growing demands managers place on their respective facilities, the next-generation of data centre cooling integrates and optimises services, software, hardware and control to reliably, efficiently and cost-effectively manage heat and energy consumption,” says Ling Cheehoe, general manager of Emerson Network Power’s Market Management organisation in Asia.

“Emerson was the first to introduce self-contained IT cooling units through our Liebert business in 1965 and we have since been a leader and expert in this field. Expanding to overall Thermal Management illustrates Emerson Network Power’s commitment to the evolving market, and is in smart anticipation of the market’s requirement for more sophisticated cooling solutions.”

This announcement coincides with a new Frost & Sullivan report which announces a 100% growth for the Asia Pacific data centre cooling market by 2018. According to the study, this is due to the increasing emphasis on data centre efficiency and the growing demand for cloud-based services. The spike in global networking and social media, together with demand for digital transactions and online hosting services, has accelerated the construction of data centres in the Asia Pacific. Coupled with changing regulations on global warming and carbon emissions, the need for total performance efficiency is further underscored.

“What we’re doing with our overall approach to thermal management is helping our customers analyse, understand and act on that data to realise more efficient, more sophisticated real-time environmental control,” says John Schneider, who will lead Emerson Network Power’s global Thermal Management business as vice president and general manager.

“That control is realised through hardware, software and services that include everything from more intelligent and versatile cooling technologies to data.”

Today’s data centre infrastructure systems use networks of wireline and wireless sensors to monitor equipment performance and environmental conditions and are better equipped to act on that data. These capabilities were not available in the past and, even today, the additional intelligence often is lost in floods of data.