Provider of energy management solutions Vigilent has secured US$6.7m in funding from Accel Partners, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. Vigilent’s portfolio includes solutions for central telecommunications offices and for data center infrastructure management (DCIM).

Vigilent’s DCIM solution consists of wireless temperature sensors, an aggregation gateway and a server installed at the customer’s data center. The system uses data collected by the sensors to find optimal cooling demand and adjust cooling load accordingly. Data may be collected across multiple customer sites.

Christopher Kryzan, VP of marketing at Vigilent, said this was the company’s first institutional round of financing. Until this round, the company has been financed privately and by its own revenue.

“What’s really financed us up to this point has been basically our customers buying our product,” he said. The company has grown to where it needs additional funding to capture the demand it sees on the market.

“We’ve gone to a point this year where we see a whole bunch of opportunity immediately in front of us,” Kryzan said.

Vigilent said it would use new capital to expand its product portfolio, expand geographically and augment its staff. Kryzan said international expansion, starting with an office in Europe, was on the slate.

In addition to using real-time data, Vigilent’s software collects historical data from all of its customers. How much data it has access to and permission to collect depends on the individual customer.

The company uses historical data to further optimize efficiency and to predict future infrastructure abnormalities. The data can also be used for capacity planning.