First published in the InTandem e-newsletter distributed internally world wide
Tired of that darn server taking up floor space? The Tandem Business Unit Industrial Design department has an award-winning alternative. Instead of a box in a closet connected by cables to every desktop in the office, think about a ceiling-mounted server transmitting and receiving information by radio signal.

Over the years, Tandem and the Tandem Business Unit have garnered nearly 100 national and international design awards, said John Guenther, director of the Industrial Design/Human Factors department in Cupertino. The latest coup is a Silver Award from the Industrial Designers of America for the E2C2 in-ceiling server.

The ceiling panel is actually the bottom of the hidden rig. At the touch a button the whole unit drops down for waist-high servicing. “Taking up the floor space is very expensive,” said Guenther. “In Tokyo, for instance, they charge for office space by the square inch.

“To clutter up the floor with computers, then run the wires down from the ceiling is really an expensive proposition,” Guenther added. “I thought, let’s put these computers up in the ceiling. We don’t have to put a box around them, the air conditioning is up there already, the power is up there…it’s all up in the ceiling.”

The E2C2 project is the product of three minds. Guenther and designers Doug Campbell and Brian Perry collaborated to conceive, design and construct the E2C2.

Advanced Technology
Aside from its location, the E2C2 is way ahead of its time. Local desktops send information to the hidden server via radio signals instead of cables.

“Once the server receives information, it would communicate with other servers via high-speed fiber optic cables that are already routed in the ceiling,” said Perry. “The advantage is that the fiber optic cabling is already routed in the ceiling along with this computer, so you don’t have to tear the building apart routing cables from the ceiling to people’s desks.”

There are no fans, metal or Fiberglas casing, and no printed circuit boards, so the unit only weighs about 25 pounds. “Instead of an extensive circuit board,” said Guenther, “we simply form a piece of plastic with the circuits already etched into it and surface mount the components on to it.” Similar technology is already used for low-cost consumer goods.

Anyone who has pulled down an acoustical tile ceiling knows it’s a dusty job, but Guenther insists the dust won’t be a problem for the E2C2. “It’s pretty bullet proof. It’s a self-contained cooling system where you have cool air coming in and hot air going out. You can throw dirt on this thing and it will still run,” he added.

“It’s really fun to have a team of imaginative people working together because each person contributes to a different aspect of a project,” said Guenther, who supplied the technology and engineering side of the equation.

For E2C2, the team was a particularly a good mix. Campbell’s craftsman skills, Perry’s innovation and Gunther’s technology all came together to turn concept into reality.

The E2C2 project was the most complicated and the most interesting Campbell has worked on. There was, “a lot of problem solving involved with this project,” requiring innovative mechanical solutions and use of materials, he said.

Where Great Ideas Start
The E2C2 concept grew out of a chance meeting Guenther had at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a specialist from Johnson Controls, a facilities management and controls company. Johnson Controls is marketing a plan to operate the utilities of a building on a guaranteed basis, paralleling the Compaq NonStop™ concept.

“I’m thinking, here’s Johnson Controls setting up contracts to give people a failure-proof building and that’s the business we’re in, in computers,” said Guenther. “Let’s provide a computer that leverages a building that has guaranteed power and cooling, all the things we need in our computers. We’ll just use the building as our source.”

Concept and Reality
Of course, industrial design departments do more than conceptualize. Most of the time ID departments design for products approved for the market. In that case, “we work with marketing to define what design the product needs to be viable,” Guenther said. “We’ll start out with half a dozen potential ideas and get half a dozen of the best minds on it who analyze choices. They determine which has the most promise and which ideas won’t go anywhere.”

Once a design is ready for production, the designers specify surfaces, materials, textures, colors and mechanical aspects. Then engineers document every last nut, bolt and bracket needed for construction.

The Bigger Picture
The Tandem Business Unit industrial design department is one of five ID groups within Compaq. Guenther chairs Compaq’s Strategic Industrial Design Council, made up of directors and managers from the ID departments. The council works together on design issues, project collaboration and nut-and-bolt issues including color, graphics and surface finishes.

Being part of Compaq’s industrial design family has fostered learning in both directions. “The PC approach to design is rarely applicable to the more technologically complex types of products, but we have been able to incorporate more manufacturing advantages,” said Guenther.

Although there are no current plans to develop a uniform look for all Compaq products, from PC to Himalaya, “who knows what the future will bring,” he added. 

The View From Tandem
Engineering specifications are important in high-end servers, but so is design. “Something like 65 percent of our business is international, and design awards mean a lot more in Europe and Asia than in the U.S. It is very prestigious to buy products that have won design awards,” said Guenther.

So, since there are no plans for production, why build a mock-up like the E2C2? “This is an invention of the future,” said Guenther. “The idea is to inspire people to understand that there is a really interesting future ahead of us and the Tandem Business Unit of Compaq is a very creative organization, so that creativity must roll into the rest of the business.”