Emerson Network Power advances the discussion on Energy Logic – a holistic, prioritized roadmap that reduces up to 50% of data center power consumption without compromising effi ciency and availability. To show how a metric can further uncover important insights about performance, Emerson developed an industry-fi rst metric to enable data center professionals to calculate the ROI of energy-effi cient infrastructure and equipment.   The new whitepaper shows how a considered and structured planning approach to data center efficiency can measurably offset CAPEX through ongoing operational savings, and by extension, demonstrate a measurable ROI.

Savings Quantified

Energy Logic’s placeholder metric show progressive savings from each of the 10 Energy Logic actions needed to improve data center efficiency.



Using a 465sqm data center consuming 1127kW of power, the payback periods for most of the actions take less than a year. Some are almost immediate, such as the use of server power management features.


What can a Metric do for you?

A metric enables data center professionals to make informed decisions on how to invest on IT infrastructure and show savings to the business. Moreover, a meaningful measure can:

• Direct them to the right behavior – considered and structured planning
• Provide guidance in selecting IT equipment
• Help measure effi ciency from the IT device up to the data center level

What is CUPS?

Computer Units per Second or CUPS is a placeholder metric for computing data center output. It is based on average server performance in 2002. Using data from various industry sources, Emerson calculated the change in CUPS between 2002 and 2007, providing a common server performance measure required to calculate efficiency.


4 Actions with the Greatest Impact

Using the CUPS metric to the Energy Logic model, Emerson found that the greatest effi ciency gains can be achieved through:

• Speedy refresh cycle for IT technology – replacing ineffi cient server processors and power supply with more efficient technologies help improve efficiency
• Implementing sever power management policies – Power management can increase data center efficiency by lowering the power consumed by servers during idle period
• Virtualization – this application increases server utilization
• Adopting a high-density architecture – high-density cooling creates the largest impact on data center efficiency. It also helps alleviate space constraints.