IBM Grants Water-Cooling Intellectual Property License to Vette Corp


Enables Collaboration to Provide End-to-End Solutions for Data Center Cooling

ARMONK, NY - 07 Dec 2007: IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Vette Corp ("Vette"), a global provider of thermal management solutions, today announced a series of agreements for Vette to license IBM's Rear Door Heat eXchanger water-cooling technology. In addition to increasing access to the IBM CoolBlue(TM) portfolio of technologies, the agreements provide a path for the development of additional products that both companies plan to offer to meet the growing need for diverse high-density cooling solutions.

The Rear Door Heat eXchanger is a low-profile door that mounts to the back of racks containing clusters of servers, storage or communications equipment. Warm exhaust air generated by the equipment passes over an embedded chilled water coil mounted in the IBM Rear Door Heat eXchanger that removes excess heat before it enters the facility whitespace. The product does not use fans or any moving parts giving it best-in-class reliability while providing increased uptime and potential cooling energy cost savings. The Rear Door Heat eXchanger is extremely effective at dealing with data center 'hot-spots' and facilitates the deployment of fully loaded racks, offering space savings and flexibility for sites that have often exceeded their cooling capacity.

Under the terms of the agreements, Vette will use IBM's Rear Door Heat eXchanger technology to manufacture product and to develop new products that integrate easily with a majority of industry standard 42U racks. The company will also supply ancillary products, installation, commissioning and support services, enabling the delivery of turn-key project deployments. Under the terms of the agreements, Vette also has rights to use IBM's Cooling Technology logo and patent. Further terms of the agreement are not available.

"According to a leading analyst, 50 percent of the data centers in the world will not have enough power to meet the power and cooling requirements of high-density computing gear by the end of 2008. Today, Vette offers a solution that leverages over three decades of IBM water-cooling experience and provides the potential for tremendous energy savings," said George Dannecker, Vette Corp President and CEO. "The move makes Vette Corp the first fully integrated electronics company to offer both spot and system level cooling paired with liquid cooling for datacom facility applications," Dannecker concluded.

"IBM's Rear Door Heat eXchanger illustrates IBM's commitment to keeping datacenters cool," said Mike Desens, IBM vice president, data center development. "IBM pioneered liquid-cooling technology at the systems level and our relationship with Vette Corp will help bring this technology to a broader set of customers and products."

About CoolBlue

The CoolBlue portfolio of IBM innovations includes comprehensive hardware and systems-management tools for computing environments, enabling clients to better optimize the power consumption, management and cooling of infrastructure at the system, rack and datacenter levels. The CoolBlue portfolio includes IBM PowerConfigurator, PowerExecutive, and Rear Door Heat eXchanger.

IBM has earned the most U.S. patents for 14 consecutive years and is the world's largest holder of U.S. patents.

For more information about Vette Corp, visit: www.vettecorp.com

For more information about IBM, go to: www.ibm.com

Contact(s) information

John Buscemi
IBM Media Relations
914-766-4495
jbuscemi@us.ibm.com

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