The Cabling Blog Archives for October 2009

Today's news about Emerson Network Power buying Avocent for $1.2 billion is all over the finance pages. We'll let them sort out whether or not Emerson's paying too much at $25 per share. I believe cabling and data center professionals (who don't own the stock) will be more interested in the concept that with this purchase, Emerson is acquiring the capability to produce data center energy-efficiency metrics.

Several years ago, when we began turning specific focus to cabling within data centers, I quickly discovered that I could begin a conversation about data centers discussing any topic at all. Whether to run cables overhead or under the floor; choosing copper or fiber for 10-gig; figuring out how to patch in such high-density spaces; whatever. Regardless of how the conversation started, it always came around to the theme of power consumption and cooling efforts in the data center.

As Avocent's relatively new CEO Michael Borman recently told Forbes.com, the company has relationships with server manufacturers that allow it access to energy-consumption information. Such data could prove to be gold for Emerson in the long term. The Green Grid is all over energy-efficiency metrics, and I for one believe we'll all be paying pretty close attention real soon.

Once the Emerson-Avocent deal closes around the first of the year, I'll also be looking to see how Emerson integrates this asset into the breadth of its Emerson Network Power offerings.