Dr. Clifford Federspiel began his career in R&D at Johnson Controls after receiving his BSME from California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, and his SMME and PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1998 he joined the University of California, Berkeley, where he was a Specialist at The Center for Environmental Design Research and the Electronics Research Laboratory.

In 2004 Dr. Federspiel launched Federspiel Controls as a consulting and research firm that would pioneer this new technology segment. It quickly became evident that this was the right technology at the right time, as spiraling energy costs forced facilities and data center managers to take a hard look at optimizing their use, and federal and state initiatives to green the building infrastructure were launched.

In 2008, to meet the rapidly growing demand for its technology and expertise, the firm evolved to deliver a line of products and services targeted at a worldwide customer base.

In 2011, Federspiel Controls renamed itself Vigilent, to reflect its evolution into a multinational corporation with a broad line of products and services designed to optimize and protect energy efficiency.

Vigilent is the leader in intelligent energy management systems for data centers, telcos and large, commercial buildings. Although its technology can serve the needs of many other applications, the firm has targeted these two categories in order to focus its efforts on delivering products and services tuned to the particular needs of these environments.

The firm's offerings deliver a strong value proposition: Cooling becomes a managed resource with measurable paybacks in reliability, resiliency and reduced power costs.

Vigilent technology is built upon a foundation of closed-loop control:

• Measure – The facility is instrumented with wireless sensors that measure key environmental attributes.
• Model – The facility and all of the components related to heating and cooling are modeled in a sophisticated artificial intelligence network that profiles the interaction of each and every component with every other in real time, even allowing the dynamic system to be simulated for what-if exploration enabling sophisticated expansion and contingency planning.
• Manage – The behavior and performance of these components is automatically and dynamically controlled, optimizing to meet desired goals.

Vigilent offers energy management technology packaged as ready-to-install systems, as well as a family of managed services. The offerings are designed to deliver on the following goals:

• Turn cooling into a managed resource – Data from real-time measurements collected from a network of wireless sensors is used by a sophisticated artificial intelligence system, which combines the data with a site-specific profile it has evolved, to provide closed-loop feedback of CRAC/CRAH and HVAC units to maintain temperatures within target ranges.
• Rapid and easy deployment – Components are designed to install with minimal disruption to a facility's ongoing activities. Devices automatically configure for each location, and the AI system develops a unique, and dynamic, profile of the cooling environment. The system can easily be controlled through a web interface, which provides a sophisticated, yet friendly, means of managing the cooling resources.
• Reduce energy costs – While optimizing cooling to yield temperatures within target ranges, the system can also significantly reduce energy costs related to cooling by up to 15% to 25%. This is a side benefit that, at the same time, yields a rapid payback through lower, ongoing energy costs.