Menlo Park, Calif.-based Nlyte Software attracted $12 million in a Series C round of financing led by NGEN Partners. The funds will go toward product development and staffing up as the data center infrastructure management firm faces increased demand for its software and cementing its partnerships with the likes of  HP, BMC and VMware.

Nlyte specializes in monitoring and management software tools that give data center operators insight into their IT infrastructure’s energy consumption and helps them plan and validate efficiency-boosting strategies.  According to the startup, its software can yield enormous cost savings and operational efficiency benefits including a 20 percent reduction in operating expenses and giving aging data centers a new lease on life, up to 75 percent in some cases.

It’s a compelling message, particularly now that companies are scrambling to ramp up capacity as web-based services and the cloud take off. It doesn’t help that some firms are having a tough time finding room to grow. Gartner forecasts that green data center strategies can help companies grow capacity by 300 percent by using 60 percent less space. Nlyte’s tech is among the growing ecosystem of data center solutions that are helping that prediction come true.