Monroe, La.-based CenturyLink Inc., one of the largest data-center builders and operators in the U.S., is testing a new fuel cell technology at its Irvine operation that could lead to significant cost savings in the capital-intensive sector while freeing up power on the taxed electrical power grid run by Southern California Edison and other energy providers.
The fuel cell system purchased from Sunnyvale-based Bloom Energy is powering about 6% of CenturyLink’s 119,000-square-foot Irvine OC2 facility on Von Karman Avenue. It accounts for about 500 kilowatts, which would power the equivalent of roughly 500 homes.
Bloom’s technology, which converts natural gas through an onsite system that helps power cloud, hosting and colocation services, is used in data centers operated by Walmart, Apple, Google, AT&T and Microsoft.
The technology has attracted big-name customers because power isn’t lost through the transmission process or hindered by periodic outages on the grid.
“It’s truly as efficient as you can get to deliver power to the data center,” said Drew Leonard, CenturyLink’s vice president of colocation product management. “If this works out, it’s definitely a technology we’ll look to deploy across new data centers and potentially retrofitting.”
Its Irvine facility is the first data center to use fuel cells in Southern California and the first to use the emerging technology in a multitenant property.
CenturyLink, which has operated in Irvine since 2000, employs 85 locally, which puts the company among the 10 largest telecoms in OC. It operates 58 data centers globally and posted revenue of $18 billion last year.
Kofax Sale Gets Approvals
Irvine-based Kofax Ltd.’s $1 billion sale to Lexmark International Inc. in Lexington, Ky., has received approvals from regulators in the U.S. and Germany as the transaction nears a close.
The business software maker said it received antitrust clearance under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Act enacted in 1976, as well as a nod from the German Federal Cartel Office.
The deal, which turned heads on Wall Street, carried a nearly 50% premium on the company’s share price at the close of trading March 25, the day the sale was announced.
The sale, expected to now close around May 21, would end Kofax’ short stint as a U.S. public company. It began trading on the Nasdaq in December 2013 under the symbol KFX, raising $11 million in an initial public offering, the first in the local tech sector in years. Kofax, the eighth largest software maker in OC with 279 employees, posted revenue of nearly $290 million in the 12 months through June, the end of its fiscal year.
Yahoo Exec to QLogic Board
Yahoo Inc. executive Jay Rossiter has been appointed to the board of Aliso Viejo-based networking equipment maker QLogic Corp.
The tech veteran serves as senior vice president of the Cloud Platform Group at the Sunnyvale search and content provider and had prior senior management positions at Oracle, 3Com and Bell Labs.
He also sits on the board of Santa Clara-based business software maker Hortonworks Inc.
QLogic hasn’t decided on the board committee Rossiter will serve on, according to regulatory filings.
The company posted revenue of $520 million in the 12 months through March, up 13% from its prior fiscal year.
