ISR adds commercial division

ISR, a Liberty Lake company that produces spray-cooling systems used by the U.S. military, has launched a new division focused on selling products to large commercial customers.

ISR CEO Jeff Severs said the new division should grow from a handful of employees now to 30 by early 2006.

The privately held company, founded in 1988, develops and manufactures cooling products using its patented SprayCool technology.

During 2005, ISR will generate about $46 million in sales, said Severs. All that revenue will come from contracts with the federal government, he said. The technology is being used by the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps in ground vehicles, airplanes and other equipment.

The commercial division will operate in a building next to ISR’s headquarters in Liberty Lake, Severs said.

“We decided against locating the commercial division separate from (our main office),” he said.

Rob Savette, an executive with experience running data centers, has become a vice president for marketing and general manager of the new division.

Savette is has more than 20 years of management experience with companies such as Sequel Technology, 1NService and Titan, Inc.

His experience in the data center industry will be critical in selling ISR products to the major players in that field, said Severs.

Data centers that handle large volumes of information for big customers need ways to protect their servers from going down due to excess heat. ISR’s SprayCool technology uses evaporation to cool electronics by spraying a fine mist of coolant directly onto electronics through a continuously cycling, closed-loop system.

That technology allows customers to “substantially improve computing performance and reliability while dramatically reducing the size and scale of their data centers and overall technology designs,” said Severs in a news release.

The goal is for ISR’s commercial division to generate about $15 million in sales in 2007, according to Severs. He called that projection a conservative target based on ISR’s market analysis.

The core principle of evaporative sprays will be used in both military and commercial applications, said Severs. “But there will unique challenges that we’ll have to address” in modifying the SprayCool system for data-center use, he added.

ISR’s two current offices, in Liberty Lake and in Pullman, employ more than 200 workers.

Severs said “it’s too early to tell” whether production of the company’s systems will remain in Liberty Lake or shift elsewhere.