Space savings: How Bowne & Co. used more efficient cooling and power systems to help drop data-center size requirement by 60%

When it comes to data center operations, space is money. That's why Bowne focused on reducing the footprint when it built a new data center in West Caldwell, N.J., in the fall of 2006.

Bowne has a storied history. Founded in 1775, the company is the world's oldest financial printing company, churning out annual reports, stock certificates and other financial and regulatory documents. The New York City firm has 3,200 employees in 60 offices around the globe.

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Bowne operates three data centers in the United States and one in Europe. Two act as primary data centers and two are secondary facilities.

The footprint for the West Caldwell data center is 60% smaller than its predecessor's. Infrastructure enhancements made this possible, says Louis Bomentre, Bowne's director of facilities critical infrastructure: "Our New Jersey data center incorporates precision cooling, support for high-density environments, newer HVAC systems and power distribution, and hot aisle/cold aisle technology. That's what allowed us to collapse our data center into a smaller footprint."

With a smaller data center, however, cooling becomes a bigger challenge, Bomentre says. "Smaller-footprint data centers . . . become more voracious. Their appetites for energy and cooling multiply. You have to really focus on hot aisle/cool aisle containment and power distribution local to the rack," he says.

Rather than cooling the entire computer room, Bowne chose to cool the IT equipment directly. The new data center has precision cooling at the rack level, and hot-air containment at the rack level.

"Our precision, in-row cooling units are modular," Bomentre says. "We only buy the amount of precision cooling that is required. We're not cooling above and beyond what the IT equipment is producing. Even our chiller system is expandable. We've designed it in 10-ton increments, so we can add a 10-ton chiller and a 10-ton condenser when we need it."

Bowne also has saved on power costs by deploying American Power Conversion's Symmetra PX systems, which are expandable, energy-efficient UPSs. "We only purchase the amount of power required by the business today. We're never oversizing, buying more than we need or buying for tomorrow," Bomentre says.

Bowne monitors the power consumption of its UPS systems and racks, as well as the heat-load distribution of its precision cooling system.

"We're preparing that data to where it can become useful to benefit Bowne's bottom line," Bomentre says.

For 2008, Bomentre is evaluating green sources of electricity for his West Caldwell data center. "We're looking into deregulation so we can purchase our power from green providers. With our savings, we're looking to offset our carbon footprint to become a neutral environment," he says.