Leading Edge Design Group

Durham, NH – June 18, 2010 – Leading Edge Design Group, a leading provider of Energy Optimization Services, announced today that they have been awarded the design for the Research Computing Center (RCC) Data Center at the University of New Hampshire.  The existing data center will be completely reconfigured, creating next-generation data center space to support the University’s research operations.

The University of New Hampshire’s Research Computing Center, located in Morse Hall, is a data center that supports sponsored research on the University Campus.  The RCC was constructed in 1986 and still operates with much of the original infrastructure.  “There are several critical programs and projects that are running in the Research Computing Center,” said Patrick Messer, Director of the Research Computing Center.  “The aging electrical and mechanical equipment presents a significant risk to our operations.” 

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So here’s what is happening in the market place. The vendors are all on a major campaign with end users (primarily industrial concerns) to practically give these T5 & T8 systems away since they know that it won’t be long until the LED lighting solution dominates the market… and the rebates for these fluorescent lighting systems are still available, making it all that much more attractive  to the end user.

Although the pricing for the LED solutions will consistently drop as the technology improves and the options increase, there is presently no way to compete with a fluorescent lighting solution on strictly a cost comparison for a turnkey installation, especially when you factor in the incentives provided for the fluorescent solutions that are not available for the LED solutions.  It is like the utility companies, through their retro-active energy initiative programs, are steering their customers to invest in old technology simply because their incentives are based on this old technology and they are not prepared for the technologies that are available today.

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South Burlington, VT – June 7, 2010 – Leading Edge Design Group, a leading provider of Energy Optimization Services, announced today that they will help Tech Vault Inc pursue a LEED Gold Certification for their new next generation Data Center and Colocation facility in South Burlington, VT.  This achievement would make Tech Vault the first LEED Gold Data Center in the Northeast.

In their new Data Center design, Tech Vault has worked diligently with Leading Edge Design Group to minimize the carbon footprint and prioritize energy efficiency in design.  Their commitment to efficiency was recently rewarded with a substantial energy rebate offer from Efficiency Vermont.  In order to further their commitment to energy efficiency, Tech Vault has decided to pursue a LEED Gold Certification for the Data Center.  “Many data center projects that achieve LEED certifications of any level include construction of office spaces that help increase available LEED credits, but construction of the Tech Vault facility entails data center spaces only, which makes it extremely challenging to achieve the LEED Gold designation,” said Todd Boucher, Principal at Leading Edge Design Group.  “Despite this obstacle, Tech Vault remains committed to the aggressive pursuit of a LEED Gold designation and we are excited for the opportunity to participate in such a progressive project.”

The Tech Vault data center, www.techvault.net, is currently under construction with a summer completion date.

The Pledge: An IP camera surveillance system and a card access solution. Two completely independent systems. One assists covering the details you missed while you weren’t watching and the other guards access physical entry into or around your facility. Most of the setups I’ve come across traditionally stand alone, are separately managed and a link between the two is nonexistent.

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I had the good fortune of attending the Uptime Institute Symposium in New York City a couple weeks ago and found the expertise, knowledge exchange, and call for industry collaboration to be really remarkable (along with the way in which the Institute representatives upheld the schedule by vociferously terminating sessions the second they extended past their allotted time). Although the Institute has focused primarily on improving “reliability and uninterruptible availability,” in the data center, the Symposium almost exclusively revolved around energy efficiency in the data center. In the Opening Keynote addresses, Pitt Turner elaborated on “real” PUE while Lauralee Martin from Jones Lang LaSalle spoke on the “Greening of IT” from a CFO’s perspective. If you couldn’t have derived the theme of the Symposium from the efficiency-dominated schedule, the opening addresses officially declared the Symposium all about energy and less about uptime.

While the clamorous disputes over the validity of PUE and the lack of an information technology component to the Tier Standards were certainly compelling, the most interesting part of the Symposium was the predictive portrait the discussions framed for the immediate future of the industry. Change is coming—rapidly—to the data center industry and it is our job as client advocates to ensure that we are preparing our end users for the impacts these changes will have on their data centers.

A few highlights include:

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