Parker: CoolIT delivers Direct Liquid Cooling solutions to data centres

A Calgary high-tech company, which is providing Direct Liquid Cooling (DLC) to the world’s most demanding data centres, has recorded 100 new hires this year and is planning for more growth.

CoolIT Systems designs and manufactures DLC cooling products and components to manage challenging heat loads and deliver the high density, efficiency and performance required by huge data centres run by some of the most powerful technology firms including Intel, HP, Dell and Cray.

Its rapid growth meant calling upon the Colliers International team of Callum McLaughlin, Peter Mayerchak and Paul Marsden to once again find more space.

In 2000 CoolIT senior vice president and co-founder Brydon Gierl (who is a fabricator/builder) and his original entrepreneurial partner (who was a gaming enthusiast) sat around a kitchen table to tackle the problem of overheating in desktop gaming computers. They came up with the idea of cooling by pumping coolants and created a cottage industry between friends.

But Gierl says others saw their new product as an opportunity for a bigger audience and after three years of basement laboratory developing, with a new understanding of the bigger picture and the tough round of securing funding, CoolIT was launched and being pitched at consumer electronic shows.

By 2011, the DLC system had caught the attention of Corsair Components, the U.S.-based computer peripherals and components giant, and they became a partner of CoolIT in its gaming cooling product.

Gierl boldly leased 7,000 square feet where research and development continued and six people were employed in assembly.

Then, a move was made into a 25,000-square-foot building in Sunridge Building Park and since then, another call was made to Colliers — CoolIT added more bays to take the square footage up to 31,000. More recently, McLaughlin and the team negotiated the lease on a separate 14,000-square-foot building across the back of its premises to re-house the company’s R&D laboratory, design and development and testing facilities, and renewed the entire 41,000-square-foot facility for a five-year period.

A big reason of the need for extra space is that a good portion of the manufacturing that has been done in China is being repatriated back to Calgary. The desktop liquid cooler for gaming will remain overseas where 50,000 to 60,000 units per month are manufactured, packaged and distributed around the world by Corsair.

In just eight years, this “cottage industry” has grown to become a leader in the supply of DLC technology for large scale data centre installations to a wide range of industries including artificial intelligence, government research, finance, banks and educational institutions.

CoolIT’s impressive list of case studies include designing and installing liquid cooling to Frontera, the world’s fastest academic supercomputer based at the Texas Advanced Computing Center.

Gierl spent a lot of his time along with executive vice president, operations Patrick McGinn interfacing with customers, so it was most fortunate that Peter Caverley, a Canadian who had spent many years working in Silicon Valley, decided to return to Canada and has been the company’s CEO for the past two years. Well known in the industry, he has been leading the firm in its mission to “make fast computers faster; hot computers cooler; (and) environmental footprints smaller,” while continuing to raise capital.

CoolIT is another hi-tech success story. Increasing staff from 35 to 120 in the past four years is an indicator of a healthy Calgary industry.

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Twenty-four years after the Calgary Herald began publishing, The Canadian Club of Calgary was established in 1907 dedicated to promoting Canadian identity, encouraging Canadian unity, and fostering an interest in public affairs and Canadian institutions. At its final 2019 monthly luncheon at The Ranchmen’s Club on Thursday, December 19, the guest speaker is Lorne Motley, editor-in-chief of the Calgary Herald and Calgary Sun. Born in Didsbury, he began his career in the newspaper business 34 years ago.

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Another Calgary industry that is resurging is marketing. Cindee Stephen, president of the Calgary Marketing Association, reports that her membership has grown to more than 2,000, which makes it the second largest in the country next to Toronto. Over this last two months, it has posted more job opportunities than the rest of the year combined.

David Parker appears regularly in the Herald. Read his columns online at calgaryherald.com/business. He can be reached at 403-830-4622 or by email at info@davidparker.ca.