Elliptical Mobile positions its micro-modular datacenter design for larger sites Analyst: Daniel Bizo 19 Aug, 2013 Elliptical Mobile Solutions (EMS) has landed some high-profile customers in recent months, and is poised to grow its global footprint. While the company's micro-modular design is a natural fit for branch office and remote deployments, it has demonstrated its viability in larger sites, too. The company claims that substantial reductions in capital expenditures for operators are possible when a whole datacenter is built on its self-contained cabinets savings that primarily come from lowered facilities costs because no purpose-built data halls are needed. EMS has won a few deals for smaller sites with multiple units, but adoption is still sporadic due to limited acceptance of the micro-modular concept. In terms of larger deployments, EMS says it has a customer site with 16 high-density cabinets. The biggest challenge is that a micro-modular site looks very different from a traditional datacenter environment, EMS says. Also, to realize all the economic benefits, the facilities team needs to work closely with a supportive and sophisticated IT department. Context Elliptical Mobile Solutions, headquartered in Chandler, Arizona, started marketing its flavor of prefabricated modular (PFM) datacenters in 2009 after four years of low-profile product development following its inception in 2005. We estimate that its 2013 revenue will be $2-4m. EMS is owned by Elliptical Media and funded by angel investors. The company's initial success was largely driven by its ability to support micro sites with as little as a half rack of IT. This helped the company to win customers in more than a dozen countries across North America, Europe, Africa and Asia-Pacific. AOL announced in June 2012 that it deployed EMS micro modules across dispersed sites to enhance its content-delivery network. Its approach has been endorsed by the high-profile head of datacenters at AOL, Mike Manos, which provided a welcome surge of interest.
In March EMS also landed the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), an agency of the US Department of Transportation, as a client for a high-performance computing (HPC) project. FAA chose an EMS-based cluster from HPC specialist Nor-Tech for its high-density and selfcontained operation, which requires little space preparation the system was deployed in an existing building. Although neither the budget nor the exact size of the cluster was made public, the use of InfiniBand interconnect in the cluster suggests a deployment of multiple EMS cabinets most likely three to five high-density micro modules, in our estimation. With self-contained cabinets, the building does not need to be airtight or have raised floor space, computer room air-conditioning (CRAC) or power distribution units all these facility-level functions come with the EMS cabinets, closely coupled to the IT racks in an enclosure. In the case of the FAA deployment, the parties claim about 50% capital cost reduction compared with traditional approaches. Technology EMS has three main product lines: the C3-S.P.E.A.R., the R.A.S.E.R. DX and the R.A.S.E.R. HD. The C3-S.P.E.A.R. is EMS's first product, introduced in 2009 for portable IT applications. It is a 24U half-rack that supports loads up to 6kW. The R.A.S.E.R. DX and HD, introduced in 2010 and 2011, respectively, are full 42U rack products designed to different cooling capacity points from 12kW using air up to 80kW with chilled water. In a 2N redundant setup with warm (up to 32 C) water cooling, the HD can cool 26kW (no chillers required in this case). The cooling modules are EMS's own design. EMS cabinets are certified for outdoor use, too, but can be housed in any light outer shell or room as such warehouse or office buildings with sufficient ventilation, for example. Cabinets integrate closed loop cooling units to prevent outside air from mixing with internal air. The cabinets have fire suppression and shock absorption, to allow the modules to be moved even if fully populated. In other words, each cabinet is a raised floor white-space environment in its own right - all they need is power, network connectivity and (in some use cases) ducting for heat ejection. EMS micro-modules are IT-vendor-neutral and can accommodate any standard 19-inch rack-mount equipment. In the event of a cooling failure, customers can add additional heat-ejection capability to the DX and C3-S.P.E.A.R. products as a means to redundancy; for the HD product, two heat exchangers can be configured. The technology, called mission-critical venting, prevents a thermal runaway of the IT equipment enclosed even if power is lost to the cabinet. A high-power fan draws in ambient air through opened louvers on the front door while hot air is being ventilated on top of the unit. Depending on customer needs, external third-party electrical and mechanical units are needed to complete the infrastructure: UPS systems, generator sets and chillers are not provided by EMS
itself. There are prefabricated modular options for such infrastructure components in the market should a customer want to keep the whole site modular. Strategy What sets EMS's micro-modular design apart from other PFM offerings is the fine-grained scalability and close coupling to IT. By employing a distributed UPS and generator set power architecture, physical infrastructure external to EMS cabinets can also be made modular. Since the electric and mechanical equipment make up 70-80% of the cost of a datacenter facility on average (without the cost of site acquisition and preparation), facilities investments can exactly match the actual power and cooling needs of IT rather than making assumptions about the next 6-18 months. A 451 Research study into datacenter economics has found that lower up-front capital requirements and higher power and cooling capacity utilization rates are the two primary advantages of prefabricated designs. With its micro-modular architecture, EMS helps customers match a large part of facilities costs with the actual IT load since additional capacity can be added with ease and speed typically within 8-12 weeks. To take full economic advantage of the EMS cabinets, the IT load has to closely match available cooling capacity at a rack level. High utilization of each cabinet is desirable for clear capital and operational efficiency reasons: fewer cabinets to buy. Potentially, this will shift IT's buying behavior and orchestration practices so that they minimize facilities overhead, using more highdensity IT systems and managing IT not just to availability and performance, but to power too. EMS, however, faces several challenges for mainstream adoption. The look and feel of a micromodular site is dramatically different from a traditional datacenter. There is no white space even if the units are housed in a dedicated datacenter facility, let alone on the floor of a warehouse or outside an existing building. EMS created its micro modules to deal with an unwelcoming environment, a key principle of the design, but that is exactly what many employees of prospective customers find off-putting IT administrators and engineers in particular. But there is much more to it than ergonomics. Since cabinets do not share cooling, IT needs to make sure the likelihood of exceeding the cooling capacity for a thermally significant period of time is statistically low. To reconcile this requirement with the financial drive for high utilization, the IT department needs a profound understanding of the dynamic power profile across its infrastructure. Furthermore, buying support infrastructure, such as UPS systems, generator sets and chillers (if needed), in small increments may be less cost-effective than using larger systems, which can erode some of the long-term financial advantages of employing EMS micro-modules if not carefully planned for. This is why EMS believes it needs to get into a datacenter project at an early stage to succeed it leverages channel partners to increase its reach. Close alignment of datacenter and IT will not only lead to a more efficient use of capital, but a much clearer picture of the facilities costs attributed to certain workloads or business units. This should prompt senior business executives to get involved and make facilities, IT and any other stakeholders work together.
Competition As a relatively small company, EMS sees limited or no competition from other prefabricated vendors at this stage. In most of the cases, EMS was probably picked over a traditional datacenter design that would have used a raised floor data hall. Only a few PFM vendors offer similar PFM products, the closest comparison is AST Modular's Smart Bunker line. Emerson also has enclosed rack offerings that can be used in an office or warehouse environment for lowand medium-density loads. However, for EMS to get accepted for primary enterprise datacenter projects in the future, it will need to compare favorably against not just brick-and-mortar projects, but competing PFM vendors that target both the enterprise and commercial datacenter operators. Several vendors ship datacenters that look exactly like a traditional build, or very close to it, with the contiguous raised floor data halls, corridors and support found in purpose-built facilities. Examples include Colt Group's ftec, Emerson's SmartMod, Data Centers Delivered (US only) and BladeRoom Group. Even if the customer does not care for the look and feel of the traditional datacenter, there are multiple designs to choose from. IO, a Phoenix-based vendor, offers self-contained IT modules that can be densely installed side-by-side to create scalable facilities supported by modular electrical and mechanical units. There are also numerous suppliers of containerized vendors, such as AST Modular and virtually all the large IT vendors. For greenfield deployments and capacity expansions at large sites, these offerings will compete head-on with EMS. In those cases, advantages of the micro-modular approach may not be as pronounced when compared with competing prefabricated designs. On the other hand, enterprise datacenter retrofits inside non-purpose-built buildings, which are typical in urban environments, should see a strong business case for micro-modules. The 451 Take Elliptical's self-contained cabinets can be installed at virtually any location that has power and network connectivity. This makes it relevant for many use cases, such as a branch or small business IT facility in an office building, remote sites, and temporary locations. Although these already represent an addressable market large enough to provide the company with ample growth opportunities, Elliptical wants to move into larger-scale datacenter deployments. While wrapping each IT rack in a datacenter module of its own may well make economic sense, especially as the facilities costs scale with the IT load, Elliptical faces other challenges it brings a disruptive approach to an industry famous for resisting change. Even if facility operators buy into the idea, they will need IT to approve it or vice versa. Such organizational issues may prove challenging to overcome for a relatively little-known startup. Special from 451 Research's Market Insight Service - DCT - Datacenter Technologies. SWOT Analysis
Strengths EMS offers the rare combination of features: fine scaling granularity, a wide range of density options per rack and a fully self-contained indoor/outdoor design. This makes EMS's micro modules highly versatile. Opportunities The versatility of micro modules makes EMS relevant in many use cases, including outdoor expansions next to an office or datacenter building, retrofitting existing space with high IT capacity, and greenfield projects for high-density computing or highly variable densities. inshare Weaknesses EMS is a startup, with all a startup's challenges, including low brand awareness and customer perceptions about the risks of doing missioncritical business with a small vendor. Furthermore, EMS is not a turnkey datacenter supplier clients will have to employ thirdparty vendors for UPS systems, chiller plants and generator sets. It also does not offer support for nonstandard IT. Threats Should the micro-modular concept prove successful, other vendors can create similar selfcontained offerings this is particularly likely from larger suppliers such as Emerson Network Power and Schneider Electric.