UK's Romonet launched a Software-as-a-Service version of its financial-analysis tool for data center operators in the US Tuesday, announcing the launch at the DatacenterDynamics Converged conference in New York City.

Called Portal, the solution is delivered on a subscription basis, accessible through a web browser, Zahl Limbuwala, Romonet's CEO and co-founder, said. The solution essentially calculates the capital and operational cost of a data center, using performance data for equipment inside the data center it gets from vendors of those products.

Portal looks at how mechanical and IT systems are connected and takes into consideration the cost associated with buying and running those systems, including energy cost, maintenance costs, the cost of turning equipment on, its efficiency, outside temperature, current load and other factors. Using the vendor data, it calculates what the cost should be if everything is connected properly.

It determines what the operator's utility bill should be. “Now what did you actually pay?” Limbuwala says.

“You've paid [your utility] US$73,000 this month for energy total for your facility,” for example. “But our model says that you should have paid $63,000, so why did you pay $10,000 more than you should have?”

If the client has overpaid, they can then drill down and find the cause of that extra cost.

Portal obfuscates the technologies inside the data center, such as chillers and pumps, distilling the data executives need to make business decisions. The technical information is available through the company's client application, which is aimed at engineers.

Romonet's market focus is entirely on large enterprises and service providers, Limbuwala says. Clients of that caliber like annual subscriptions instead of monthly ones.

Earlier this month, the company announced that the US wholesale data center provider Compass would offer Portal as part of its standard data center product. “It was such a simple way to explain our value proposition to our clients and give them a tool-set they can use to do their future capacity planning and performance evaluation,” Chris Crosby, CEO and co-founder of Compass, said.

Crosby said he was impressed with Portal's simplicity, visualization capabilities and thoroughness of the analysis it performs.

“This is the first time I’ve seen a tool that actually knows that there's a world of capital, and there's a world of operating expense,” he said. “Most guys can't think financially at all, in our space, and to have that in a tool … was very unique.”