SynapSense has announced that it is deepening its relationship with GE by securing an investment and commercial partnership as part of a focus on digital energy services.

SynapSense offers several products that provide environmental and temperature monitoring solutions to data centers – and GE wants to improve the infrastructure… greenly.

GE Energy Financial Services will be joining SynapSense’s other investors -- Emerald Technology Ventures, Sequoia Capital (News - Alert), Robert Bosch Venture Capital, American River Ventures, Nth Power and DFJ Frontier -- in a combined $5 million investment for the development and market expansion of data center monitoring, adaptive control and energy management technology.

Peter Van Deventer, CEO at SynapSense, said that deepening the collaboration with GE will play a major role in helping SynapSense deliver digital energy services that extend wireless control and resource management to the entire IT facility infrastructure.

Since 2008, GE has used SynapSense technology to monitor temperatures and other environmental factors in many of its data centers including GE Corporate and NBC Universal (News - Alert). It plans to now collaborate with SynapSense on digital energy via a commercial partnership with GE Intelligent Platforms, a technology business that provides software, hardware, services, and expertise in automation and embedded computing.

The partnership is expected to integrate SynapSense’s technology with GE Intelligent Platform’s Proficy Software and Control solutions. Company officials said that this combined offering will enable data center operators to optimize energy use by continuously aligning cooling capacity with changes in IT load.

“SynapSense is a strong addition to GE's digital energy, Smart Grid and ecomagination-related investments, offering multiple commercial and development collaboration opportunities in a data center equipment market estimated at $40 billion a year, with annual electricity consumption costing $7 billion,” said Kevin Skillern, head of venture capital investing at GE energy financial services.

Ecomagination is GE's commitment to imagine and build innovative solutions to environmental challenges while driving economic growth. Company officials said that it’s designed to help meet customers’ demand for more energy-efficient products.

“The addition of SynapSense's capabilities to our Proficy solution will enable GE to drive broader continuous improvement, with insight from the environmental metrics of the data center's raised floor as well as detailed information about the critical power and mechanical infrastructure,” said Steve Doublett, leader of data center strategy for GE corporate global infrastructure services.