Stimergy made two crucial observations. Firstly, that 45% of servers' energy needs came from their cooling systems. Secondly, that water heating was one of the main sources of energy consumption in public and residential buildings.

By using a liquid cooling and heat recovery system in server rooms and decentralising its servers to "digital boilers" located in residential and public buildings, Stimergy recycled heat from data servers to provide hot water for the sports hall showers of the Jean Moulin University, Lyon.

The server room technology improved the energy performance of the rooms, thereby cutting operational costs.

In environmental terms, the gain was even clearer: the process saved the energy that would have been used for the servers' cooling system.