Survey of Emerson Network Power's Data Center Users Group Shows Energy Efficiency and Monitoring on the Rise

Columbus, Ohio [May 26, 2009] – Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson (NYSE: EMR) and the global leader in enabling Business-Critical Continuity™, announced the results today of its bi-annual Data Center Users Group (DCUG) survey. More than 120 data center, facility and IT managers shared information about the current state of, and future plans for, their data centers.

The survey results were previewed earlier this month during the two-day DCUG spring conference in Washington, D.C. More than 200 DCUG members attended the event, which focused on technologies and best practices that enable data centers to do more with less by improving efficiency and resource utilization. Topics discussed included “reducing costs in the data center,” “optimizing existing data center resources,” “building monitoring systems that measure data center efficiency,” and “implementing containment systems.”

Most notably, the DCUG survey showed that concerns over energy efficiency and adequate monitoring/data center management capabilities continue to increase. Forty-seven percent of respondents listed energy efficiency as one of their top facilities and network concerns, while 46 percent listed adequate monitoring in their top three concerns. Other concerns included heat density, availability and power density.

The survey revealed that the current economic environment forced 61 percent of respondents to cut budgets; while 35 percent of respondents were forced to delay data center build or expansion projects. When budgets permit, more than half (52 percent) of respondents indicated future facilities would be designed to support densities of between 10 kW and 20 kW per rack – significantly higher than the 7.4 kW average supported by current facilities. Some of the reasons they cited for moving to higher density data centers was to save facility space, support blade servers and reduce energy costs.

Amid the deployment of new technologies and subsequent maintenance of the data center infrastructure, almost half of the respondents indicated that the complexity of their cooling, monitoring and power systems is increasing. More than half (55 percent) of the survey respondents turned to power and cooling assessments to help with complexities in the data center. Through these assessments, 74 percent evaluated cooling reliability, 54 percent energy consumption and 51 percent expansion plans.

The DCUG is a group of approximately 2,000 influential data center, IT and facility managers founded by Emerson Network Power in 2003. The group’s membership comprises executives with a wide variety of IT and facilities management expertise from an assortment of companies, including board member companies Vanguard, Cincinnati Bell Technology Solutions and JPMorgan Chase, among others.

For more information on the DCUG, visit www.datacenterug.org. For more information on Liebert technologies and services from Emerson Network Power, visit www.liebert.com.