GE Intelligent Platforms (News - Alert), an experienced high-performance technology company and a global provider of software, hardware, services, and expertise in automation and embedded computing, announced it has signed a cooperative agreement with Ingersoll-Rand to develop an automation platform to meet the energy and operational efficiency needs of efficient data center management.

Ingersoll-Rand is a diversified industrial company known for creating and sustaining safe, comfortable and efficient environments in commercial, residential and industrial markets,

“With data centers currently consuming 1.5 percent of the United States’ total electrical output, and expected to grow by 12 percent per year, productivity and efficiency in data centers is taking a front and center role,” said Maryrose Sylvester (News - Alert), president and CEO of GE Intelligent Platforms, in a statement. “The goal of this agreement is to help customers around the world reduce operating costs, increase energy efficiency, and extend the life of assets.”

Company officials said both companies will work to develop joint solutions that include the world-class industrial solutions of GE and the industry-leading HVAC expertise of Trane (News - Alert), a business of Ingersoll Rand.

This joint data center effort is part of GE’s ecomagination business strategy, which focuses on building innovative technologies and solutions that help customers address environmental and financial needs. GE is pursuing inclusion of the Trane/GE data center solution in the ecomagination portfolio.

The companies plan to develop intelligent solutions that tackle asset optimization, platform integration, reporting and analytics across systems, and remote monitoring and services enablers.

By partnering with GE Intelligent Platform, Ingersoll Rand will have access to GE Intelligent Platforms’ Proficy Software Platform for visualization, Advanced Analysis & Modeling and Remote Monitoring & Diagnostics, Proficy Process Systems for integrated software and high availability hardware applications for industrial and redundant control application requirements.

One of the solutions the companies will bring to market immediately is called Tracer XT, a unique platform specifically designed to integrate, manage and optimize critical facility systems. Tracer XT has the ability to integrate unlimited real-time applications including security, fire, safety as well as HVAC and power distribution and monitoring using over 150 common communications protocols.

Tracer XT also includes a hi-speed time stamp database to allow for high-speed data collection, recording over 50,000 events per second. Company officials say these combined solutions will also deliver a high level of availability and uptime by combining the strategies of redundancy of equipment, controls and workstations.

“The combination of Trane control solutions with GE’s industrial platforms provides an unprecedented breadth of capabilities and solutions,” company officials added.

“A need for interconnecting facilities and accessing real-time data is driving a convergence between building automation and IT systems,” said Joel Lehman, vice president of global controls and smart products for Ingersoll Rand, in a statement.

Data centers are expected to become ‘intelligent’ through the use of integrated building control systems that incorporate an open architecture, integrated software tools that allow for information analysis. Further the integrated hardware infrastructure offerings allow for real-time control and management of the building functions including critical systems.

Both the companies have already worked together for a solution for GE’s Ohio-based data center that consumes 24 million kWh of power each year.

 This solution, according to company officials, has resulted in reducing annual energy consumption in the data center by more than 11 percent and water usage by 20 percent.

“Ultimately, this collaboration between GE and Ingersoll Rand improves the overall value of the building through solid operations management, performance and efficiency,” Sylvester added. “By integrating all of the pieces that both companies bring to the table, we can effectively impact 60 percent of building energy use.”

As part of this datacenter initiative, Ingersoll Rand employees will be required to participate in a data center certification program to ensure that data center customers get the best of both Trane and GE in their critical system projects, the company said.

This effort, they added, is part of the Trane High Performance Building strategy designed to link the physical environment of a building to business outcomes such as uptime performance and energy and operating efficiency.

In another recent development GE Intelligent Platforms introduced the NETernity GBX460 rugged 6U OpenVPX data plane switch module, which the company claims as the first 10 Gigabit Ethernet solution of its kind to support high throughput inter processor communication (IPC (News - Alert)) between 10 gigabit Ethernet-enabled processing nodes for deployed defense and aerospace applications, TMCnet reported.