SSI Alliance

Open19 Member Profile with Brandon Peterson, Vice President, Product at CoolIT Systems

1. How would you introduce CoolIT Systems in terms of its company mission and what it offers to clients?

Founded in 2001 in Calgary, Canada, CoolIT Systems specializes in scalable liquid cooling solutions for the world’s most demanding compute environments. Through its modular, Direct Liquid Cooling technology, Rack DLC™, CoolIT enables dramatic increases in rack densities, component performance and power efficiencies. CoolIT has a wealth of knowledge, experience and intellectual property that enables us to be an authority and educator to our industry. CoolIT partners with global IT OEM leaders and Cloud Service Providers to provide the most efficient and reliable liquid cooling solutions. Together, CoolIT and its partners are leading the way for widespread adoption of efficient high-density and high-performance computing.

2. What do you see as the most important trends shaping the future of the data center industry? 

Processors are getting hotter and more challenging to keep cool. At the same time, IT racks are getting more dense. Air cooling is a legacy technology that is quickly becoming less effective in many applications and that drives customers to seek more effective means of data center thermal management. Less than 5 years ago, these were challenges faced primarily by supercomputing and high performance computing customers. Today, enterprise customers are demanding higher performance, more dense and more efficient systems which has driven a need to standardize liquid cooling. We expect to see liquid cooling adopted at scale in hyperscale, colocation and enterprise data centers to address their growing thermal management challenges.

3. What role do you think Open19 is playing in shaping the data center industry’s future?

Adoption of innovative technologies at scale is accelerated by standardization. As the industry leader in Direct Liquid Cooling, customers have often asked CoolIT about efforts to standardize our technology to industry accepted specifications. CoolIT has always supported and participated in these efforts. Open19 will play an exciting role in shaping the future of the data center industry because it strikes a balance between being IP-friendly for innovative companies like CoolIT, while driving standardization that is required for technology adoption by enterprise customers.

4. Why did CoolIT as a company want to join Open19?

The roster of exceptional member companies, engaged and talented participants, and many of our customers adopting the Open19 standard made joining Open19 a clear choice for CoolIT. We look forward to contributing our knowledge from over 20 years in liquid cooling to ensure the specifications result in high performance, cost effective and reliable products that exceed the expectations of end-users adopting the Open19 standard into their data centers.

5. What benefits do you anticipate getting from being part of the Open19 community?

CoolIT looks forward to developing new relationships with technology partners, customers and other industry experts who are part of Open19.

6. How is CoolIT planning on contributing to the Open19 community?

CoolIT plans on ensuring the Open19 standard for single-phase liquid cooling is practical for liquid cooling vendors and meets the stringent requirements we’ve built through many years developing, deploying and maintaining liquid cooling technology.

7. What is CoolIT doing in terms of data center sustainability and how does that tie into Open19’s vision and mission?

CoolIT is focused on developing reliable, high-performance liquid cooling technology.

Water is over 3000X more efficient at transferring heat than air. Single phase liquid-cooling is a key enabling technology that is helping reduce the 2% of global electricity currently consumer by data centers. It can be used to effectively keep IT racks cool using warm water – no chillers needed. It enables more sustainable data centers by reducing electricity consumption associated with fans, air conditioning and chillers.

Open19’s mission to create and nurture a community for datacenter hardware innovation is bringing together experts who will usher in rapid adoption of single-phase liquid cooling technology into data centers.

8. What are you most looking forward to with version 2 of the Open19 standards?

Of course, CoolIT is most looking forward to the single-phase liquid cooling standards. In particular, we are excited to see the first Open19 compliant liquid-cooling products built at our facilities and shipped to customers who will be adopting the standard.

9. Where can people connect with and learn more about CoolIT?

For more information about CoolIT Systems and its technology, visit http://www.coolitsystems.com or contact us through our website.

Founded in 2001 in Calgary, Canada, CoolIT Systems specializes in scalable liquid cooling solutions for the world’s most demanding compute environments. Through its modular, Direct Liquid Cooling technology, Rack DLC™, CoolIT enables dramatic increases in rack densities, component performance and power efficiencies. CoolIT has a wealth of knowledge, experience and intellectual property that enables us to be an authority and educator to our industry. CoolIT partners with global IT OEM leaders and Cloud Service Providers to provide the most efficient and reliable liquid cooling solutions. Together, CoolIT and its partners are leading the way for widespread adoption of efficient high-density and high-performance computing.