New North Grafton Firm Takes Data Centers' Temperature

Data centers, such as those used by banks and telecommunications firms, “need to be kept at a very tight temperature and humidity window,” Grafton resident Indra Purkayastha says.

Each data center has “a fair amount of instrumentation inside the server, but they don't really have anything to measure the air quality today,” he said.

Audit-Buddy, the first product developed by Purkayastha’s North Grafton-based Purkay Labs, seeks to address that need.

The pole-like device is a wireless "independent, stand alone temperature and humidity monitor," said Purkayastha’s daughter, Aheli Purkayastha, the company’s marketing and communications coordinator.

"It's a tool. It's meant to be taken out when there's a problem, and put away when you've figured out what's going on,” she said.

Purkayastha said he formed Purkay Labs, now at 202 Worcester St., Unit 5, in 2012. He had been the senior vice president of technology at iRobot.

"For quite a while I was just operating out of my basement," said Purkayastha, his company's founder and CEO.

Purkay Labs now has its design team in Wisconsin, network people in Bedford, and does its manufacturing in Taiwan, he said.

"It's kind of a global conglomeration of effort,” he said.

The North Grafton office is a "part-time lab, part-time warehouse," Purkayastha said.

"This is really where everything comes together. We ship from here," he said.

Purkayastha said his daughter is based in New York City "because of the huge financial sector all of the data centers are there.”

About 60 percent of the data centers in the US are between DC and Boston, he said.

Purkayastha said he moved to North Grafton in 2005.

"North Grafton has been home for a long time,” he said.