Future Facilities Newsletter Q12014

As a company, we have grown organically year-on-year with offices around the globe.  And yet, as encouraging as it is to see such growth, our true motivation has always been to provide the data center supply chain – from designers to owner-operators – with tools, expertise and processes that will transform their businesses.

When we started Future Facilities in 2004, we saw a market of data center owner-operators looking to maximize compute capacity and minimize TCO. Above all else, we knew two things:

• Owner-operators were paying for the entire DC supply chain (from inception to operation); a chain made of individual elements that were rarely coordinated.
• Owner-operators’ TCO and capacity aspirations were rarely, if ever, met once their DC was in operation.

It was clear that the fundamental problem was a segregation of processes that did not allow the Facility Managers (FM) to foresee the engineering impact of operational IT changes without compromising capacity, resilience and efficiency.

It was against this backdrop of understanding that we laid the foundations for our ground-breaking 6SigmaDC suite of software tools.  The objective? To introduce modeling as a way that would allow FM and IT managers to communicate and “predict” the engineering cause and effect (costs) of their actions.  Today, we call this “continuous modeling”.

It is important to note that to achieve our objectives; Future Facilities has developed a unique combination of software development arm, coupled with an engineering team. The team uses the 6SigmaDC suite in the industry, showcasing continuous modeling and 6SigmaDC’s “Virtual Facility” – a holistic model of the data center that is used to predict the impact of IT and layout changes before actual implementation.

In order to quantify the costs, we have developed the ACE assessment score, which measures the “performance” of a data center by linking Availability (resilience), Capacity and Efficiency (ACE).  Continuous modeling of the ACE performance allows the industry to redress a costly divide: the difference between aspirational requirements of a data center and the often-disappointing reality of the actual ACE performance.

So, how far have we actually come?  We have met some important goals; CFD modeling is now standard practice in data center design.  But we have gone one step beyond by developing calibration standards.  We remain the only CFD software vendor to provide validation of numerical models created against measurements for real world data centers.  This is an extremely important point in that CFD models can only be trusted once they are calibrated against real-time measurements.

Perhaps the most exciting development is our recently introduced ACE data center assessment services for the owner-operators of existing data centers.   With the ACE assessment services, we are able to advise the owner-operator in how they could retrieve (save) a large portion of their lost capacity as well as energy efficiency without compromising resilience. Our recent trials for a major financial institution, in 2012-2013, have resulted in an incredible US $10 million saving for one 24,000 sq ft data center.

Most importantly, in order to maintain these levels of operational efficiency, the owner-operator has now adopted the continuous modeling process as part of day-to-day operational strategy.

Throughout our ten years, Future Facilities has evolved into a world-class provider of innovative software technology with outstanding engineering services for the data center industry.  In simple terms, we have introduced Good Science into traditional Engineering in this sector.

Considering a diet or joining the gym as your New Years resolution? As we personally look to shed the festive indulgences, many of us will continue to look at making our data centers the most lean, efficient, and resilient installations they can possibly be.

Here at Future Facilities, we recognize that just like people, each and every data center is different, and one diet is not going to fit all. Unlike a diet, using predictive modeling, we will be able to tell you up front what the results of your changes will be!

Our new ACE Assessment Service takes a ground up approach assessing and visualizing the three critical indicators of your data center’s performance:

- Availability, Capacity and Efficiency.

- Find out exactly where you are

- Understand the consequence of any proposed change / diet you wish to make

- No risk to your current operations!

For more information on how we can help, please visit the ACE Assessment pages