Tuesday 13 December 2011

Hot prospects for Iceotope

Green technology, developed in Sheffield to cut data centre energy bills by half and re-use the waste heat they generate, has been rescued from administration by its original inventor.

Peter Hopton, who heads city-based environmentally friendly computer group VeryPC, has led a consortium, including the original engineering team, which has bought electronic equipment cooling specialist Iceotope.

The company was set up two years ago and uses an environmentally friendly fluid to rapidly conduct heat away from electronic components and allow it to be used elsewhere, possibly to heat offices.

Data centres are giant warehouses filled with computer servers and form the backbone of the Internet as well as providing secure data storage for major companies.
“With the data centre industry growing by 12 per cent each year, data centre providers are struggling to keep up with demand for higher efficiency and higher density, while keeping power consumption and costs to a minimum,” says Peter Hopton, who was not as part of the Iceotope management team when administrators were called in two months ago.
“Iceotope’s unique technology can help data centre providers to save half of all overall electricity costs compared to an average data centre.

“Approximately 40 percent of today’s data centre costs are power-related, however, by 2015, this figure will exceed 50 percent. In order to attempt to combat these escalating costs, many companies are looking to drastic measures to improve their cooling efficiency, such as moving their data centres to the Arctic Circle. Iceotope technology makes this move obsolete.”

Mr Hopton becomes chief technology officer of Iceotope, which has secured a seven figure investment.


13 December 2011

Hot prospects for Iceotope

Green technology, developed in Sheffield to cut data centre energy bills by half and re-use the waste heat they generate, has been rescued from administration by its original inventor.
Peter Hopton, who heads city-based environmentally friendly computer group VeryPC, has led a consortium, including the original engineering team, which has bought electronic equipment cooling specialist Iceotope.


The company was set up two years ago and uses an environmentally friendly fluid to rapidly conduct heat away from electronic components and allow it to be used elsewhere, possibly to heat offices.

Data centres are giant warehouses filled with computer servers and form the backbone of the Internet as well as providing secure data storage for major companies.

“With the data centre industry growing by 12 per cent each year, data centre providers are struggling to keep up with demand for higher efficiency and higher density, while keeping power consumption and costs to a minimum,”

says Peter Hopton, who was not as part of the Iceotope management team when administrators were called in two months ago.

“Iceotope’s unique technology can help data centre providers to save half of all overall electricity costs compared to an average data centre.

“Approximately 40 percent of today’s data centre costs are power-related, however, by 2015, this figure will exceed 50 percent. In order to attempt to combat these escalating costs, many companies are looking to drastic measures to improve their cooling efficiency, such as moving their data centres to the Arctic Circle. Iceotope technology makes this move obsolete.”

13 December 2011




Friday 9 December 2011

Company news round up - Coresite, Alpheus, Iceotope

CoreSite Realty Corporation declared a dividend of $0.18 per share on common stock and common stock equivalents for the fourth quarter of 2011 up $0.05 from the previous quarterly dividend rate of $0.13 per share.

The dividend will be paid on January 17, 2012 to stockholders of record on December 30, 2011.

CoreSite’s Chief Executive Officer, Tom Ray, said: "CoreSite is pleased to announce that our Board of Directors has raised CoreSite’s quarterly dividend. This increase reflects the strength of our operating model and our view of our market opportunity. We remain focused upon the systematic execution of our business plan and look forward to entering 2012 with accelerating momentum."

Acquisition

Private equity firm The Gores Group completed the acquisition of Texan fiber network and data center operator Alpheus Communications. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Buyout

The assets of North of England based company Iceotope, producers of a modular liquid cooling platform, have been bought by a consortium including the original engineering team, backed by a seven figure investment sum.

Original inventor, and newly appointed CTO, Peter Hopton led the fund-raising to acquire the technology and the IP.

Iceotope has a patented approach to reduce power consumption in data centres by tackling the problem of cooling servers at the source of the heat - at component level. Iceotope licenses this technology to vendors, helping them to reduce the cooling requirements in their servers and electronics. The electronic components are sealed inside giant heat-pipes containing an ultra-convective fluid, so that all generated heat can be captured in water and efficiently removed, without heating up the surrounding data centre environment.


09 December 2011



Hopton strikes cool deal for Iceotope

Yorkshire entrepreneur Peter Hopton has led a deal to acquire the assets of technology company Iceotope from administrators.

The founder of Sheffield-based IT business Very PC, who has previously pitched for funding on hit TV show Dragons' Den, secured backing from an angel investor to complete the deal.
Hopton is the inventor of Iceotope, a patented 'eco friendly' server cooling system which was originally backed in 2009 with £300,000 from the South Yorkshire Investment Fund.
However the company, which claims its products reduce operating costs and carbon output for data centres, went into administration in October 2011.

After hearing about the failure, Hopton, who said he was not part of the management team at the time of the administration, led a consortium including the original engineering team in a deal to acquire the technology and intellectual property of Iceotope. The consortium is backed by a seven-figure investment sum.

"I made a few phone calls and spoke to some people about the product and where it was at and why I thought the company had failed," Hopton told Insider.

"Literally, I heard the company had gone into administration on the Monday, wrote a business plan on Tuesday, finished it on the Wednesday, sent it out on Thursday and then made a few phone calls.

"By Thursday night I had a commitment and by Friday I was putting in an offer to administrators with proof of funds."

Hopton worked with his unnamed angel backer, based in Guernsey, to form a new company. The backer is expected to "come out of the woodwork" in February/March when the product is launched.

Very PC will be subcontracted to do the manufacturing and help with the engineering.
Hopton has previously pitched his green IT technologies on BBC One's Dragons' Den. Despite being turned down when he pitched his company VeryPC, Hopton has now secured investment for Iceotope - originally a VeryPC spin off - and claims to have raised more cash than he was asking for in the den.

 

09 December 2011





Tuesday 6 December 2011

ASSETS OF GREEN DATA CENTRE SPECIALIST ACQUIRED BY ORIGINAL ENGINEERING TEAM


Iceotope’s revolutionary liquid cooling technology results in cooling power cost savings of 97%

 
The assets of Sheffield-based company Iceotope, producers of the first truly scalable modular liquid cooling platform, have been bought by a consortium including the original engineering team, backed by a seven figure investment sum.  Original inventor, and newly appointed CTO, Peter Hopton led the fund-raising to acquire the technology and the IP.

 Iceotope has a patented approach to dramatically reduce power consumption in data centres by tackling the problem of cooling servers at the source of the heat – at component level.  Iceotope licenses this technology to vendors, helping them to reduce the cooling requirements in their servers and electronics.  The electronic components are sealed inside giant heat-pipes containing an ultra-convective fluid, so that all generated heat can be captured in water and efficiently removed, without heating up the surrounding data centre environment.  
Hopton is famous for pitching his green IT technologies on the TV programme Dragons’ Den.  Despite being turned down by the Dragons when he pitched his company VeryPC, Hopton has now successfully secured investment for Iceotope – originally a VeryPC spin off – allowing him to take over as CTO of Iceotope while becoming the Executive Chairman at VeryPC.

 Iceotope servers can reduce facility operating costs and carbon output with their unique thermal cooling technology.  Data centres can save 20% of power consumption at the server level and make a saving of 97% of costs associated with cooling power, an overall reduction of over 50% for the typical data centre.

 With Iceotope servers, the components are encapsulated in 3M Novec, an inert and environmentally sound coolant, and all waste heat generated from the servers is used to passively pump the coolant solution through the system by encouraging a state of ultra-convection, thus removing the need for fans, chillers and airflow.  Iceotope then transfers this heat to outside of the data centre and the heat can even be repurposed to heat other office spaces.

 “With the data centre industry growing by 12% each year, data centre providers are struggling to keep up with demand for higher efficiency and higher density, while keeping power consumption and costs to a minimum, said Peter Hopton, CTO of Iceotope.  “Iceotope’s unique technology can help data centre providers to save half of all overall electricity costs compared to an average data centre. 

 “According to IDC, approximately 40 percent of today’s data centre costs are power-related, however, by 2015, this figure will exceed 50 percent,” continued Hopton.  “In order to attempt to combat these escalating costs, many companies are looking to drastic measures to improve their cooling efficiency, such as moving their data centres to the Arctic Circle.  Iceotope technology makes this move obsolete, as this unique liquid cooling technology allows full-time free cooling everywhere on the globe.  Liquid cooling has safely been used for decades in data centres, Iceotope offers the next generation in liquid cooling to server operators.”

 
About Iceotope

Iceotope Ltd, registered in Guernsey, is a technology company that researches and develops liquid and phase change cooling solutions based around heat pipe encapsulation.  The company’s CTO Peter Hopton, the original inventor of Iceotope technology, secured a seven figure investment in order to purchase the assets of VC-backed Iceotope Ltd of England, which entered administration in October 2011.  Hopton was not a part of the management team at this time.  Iceotope is the next generation platform for cooling electronics and servers, encapsulating high performance electronics within heat pipes containing ultra-convective coolant.  Iceotope coolant engulfs and protects the electronics, cooling effectively to component level with no air flow, delivering full time free cooling, everywhere. 

 

Press contacts
Fiona Halkerston / Flora Haslam
Johnson King
+44 207 401 7968
 
06 Dec 2011