Fusion Corporate Partners

Power Assure, a provider of software solutions to optimize capacity, service levels, and power consumption within and across data centers, has raised $11.25 million in funding from Good Energies, Point Judith Capital, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. The company also announced the addition of Bernard Brenninkmeijer from Good Energies and Zaid Ashai with Point Judith Capital as new members of its board of directors. Power Assure is also the recipient of a $5 million grant from the Department of Energy providing the company with $18.75 million in total capital. This new infusion of funds will be used to expand the company’s sales and go-to-market initiatives for its optimization solutions, currently in production at large enterprise and government data centers.

Building on its suite of dynamic power management solutions for data centers, Power Assure has expanded the capabilities of its software-as-a-service-based platform to include both capacity and performance management features. The company has also developed its own proprietary runbook automation system to speed up, as well as simplify, customer management and maintenance functions. With the support of the Department of Energy, the company is also developing innovative load-shedding and shifting services to dynamically optimize power, capacity, and performance levels across geographically-dispersed data centers. With Power Assure solutions, CIOs, as well as IT and facilities managers, can extend the longevity of their existing data centers while maintaining critical customer service levels.

“The cost to build out a new data center today is averaging $100 million,” said Bernard Brenninkmeijer, Investment Director with Good Energies and newly appointed to the Power Assure Board of Directors. “As a result, data center operators are seeking solutions like Power Assure’s to extend the life spans of their existing data centers.”

Also joining Power Assure’s board of directors is Zaid Ashai, a partner with Point Judith Capital where he leads the firm’s cleantech investing efforts with a focus on energy IT.

“CIOs and data center operators are being asked to accomplish seemingly contradictory objectives, namely to maintain or even increase service performance levels while decreasing operating and energy costs,” said Ashai. “That’s exactly what Power Assure’s data center optimization technology is addressing.”

“Securing additional investment capital, especially in this recessionary climate, will allow us to hire the people we need to meet the demand we’re seeing for our products in the market,” said Brad Wurtz, CEO of Power Assure. “While curbing the enormous energy appetites of data centers and spiraling costs associated with their power consumption is one of our core competencies, our investors recognize that the optimization of data centers goes well beyond just managing power. By combining power, capacity, and performance management services with advanced load shedding and shifting technologies, we are giving our customers the tools they need to achieve new levels of efficiency in their data centers.”

Location: USA, Santa Clara, CA

Ref: F231109-497

eMeter Corporation, a Smart Grid management software company, has closed a $12.5 million round of private financing led by longtime investors Sequoia Capital and Foundation Capital, and joined by new investor Northgate Capital looking to leverage eMeter’s leadership providing software solutions to enable successful Smart Grid implementations. Given the exponential growth of the Smart Grid industry over the past year, eMeter will use the new funding to expand eMeter’s sales and marketing efforts in key markets, enhance services to current customers and continue investing in new products.

Since the last round of funding almost a year ago, the company has hired industry-recognized enterprise software veteran Gary Bloom as CEO, while continuing to show tremendous growth working with leading technology partners, such as IBM, Intergraph, SAP and Siemens, and signing new utility customers including Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative, Burbank Water and Power, Centerpoint Energy, Silicon Valley Power, Westar Energy, Central Vermont Power and most recently, Wabash Energy here in the U.S. Internationally, eMeter inked deals with UK-based Electralink, Ontario, Canada’s Independent Electricity System Operator, Germany’s EnBW Ostwurttemberg Donau Ries AG and Umetriq, and Vattenfall AB, Europe’s fourth largest generator of electricity and the largest producer of heat, and is responsible for over 6 million utility customers across Finland, Sweden, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands. Finally, leading analyst firm Gartner gave eMeter a “positive” ranking in its latest “Marketscope for Meter Data Management Products” report, while The Wall Street Journal recognized the company as one of the top 10 venture-backed clean technology companies.

Gary Bloom, CEO of eMeter, said, “As a result of our maniacal focus on the customer, the eMeter platform is being used in the most successful Smart Grid deployments around the world. I’m pleased to welcome Northgate Capital to our growing list of investors at a time when more and more utilities and consumers are embracing Smart Grid technology. With this additional capital, and the continued support of both Sequoia and Foundation, we have further strengthened the company for continued growth and momentum working with and educating utilities and consumers worldwide about eMeter’s unique approach to enabling the Smart Grid.”

Location: USA, San Mateo, C