The 12 Trailblazing days of Christmas: Sustainable IT finalists

As our twelve Trailblazing days of Christmas nears its end, we share with you the startups using technology to make the world a greener place. This category continues to bring a diverse bunch of finalists – incorporating areas of IT such as big data, risk management, data centres and more…

Eco4Cloud bring carrier-class scalable and platform-agnostic software improving virtualized-DC efficiency, SLA Management, Risk Management, Capacity Management through intelligent/dynamic workload consolidation and granular resource intelligence. Based in Italy, Eco4Cloud is backed by initial funding from DPixel (seed capital) and Principia II (venture capital).

EnergyDeck, a web-based platform that gathers energy and resource data, providing feedback to users that enables the acceleration of energy efficiency technology and practice. Founded in 2011, EnergyDeck is privately funded. The startup has impressed the judges this year, with shortlisting in Big Data, Cloud, IoT and Sustainable IT categories.

UK-based startup Iceotope is also in the running for Sustainable IT Trailblazer. Iceotope’s technology blends IT and mechanical engineering to solve some of the most pressing challenges that today’s data centre operators face. With a liquid cooling system could halve the energy usage of the datacentre industry, dramatically cut costs and prevent millions of tons of CO2 emissions, Iceotope secured $10m funding in January this year. Backers include Aster Capital, Investment Partners and Ombu Group.

From Belgium, finalist Racktivity offers a full end-to-end power management solution, giving datacenters the right tools in hand to maximize business continuity while reducing their OPEX. By adopting this solution, datacentres are provided with a continuous flow of detailed and reliable rich power data.

Last but not least is Upside Energy, who pays people to not use energy. Their cloud service aggregates spare battery capacity and uses it to relieve stress on the grid. Latest funding includes €20k from EU Climate-KIC in August 2014, and £190k by Innovate UK, for a future project in 2015.

So, it seems innovation and success are continuing into 2015 for our Sustainable IT finalists, and we look forward to awarding Sustainable IT Trailblazer in 2015…

Don’t forget – voting closes 23.59pm PT on 16^th January 2015 – see www.techtrailblazers.com/shortlist/ for more details.