A new Data Center Management as a Service Architecture has been introduced to help data center operators view real-time data and recommendations to optimize energy performance and mitigate risk.
Schneider Electric announced the launch of the software, called EcoStruxure IT, which provides predictive maintenance and decision support for plant-wide assets. By providing early, actionable data and insight into abnormal operating and asset conditions, the solutions empower the workforce to make smarter, more targeted and more proactive maintenance and operating decisions that improve operational reliability, profitability and energy efficiency.
EcoStruxure IT provides data center operators more visibility into their data center critical infrastructure — such as cooling, uninterruptible power supply, environmental monitoring — across their entire data center portfolio. This can enable more optimized, efficient operations.
Essentially, with EcoStruxure IT, a manager can see how their data center infrastructure in Nevada, Florida, Ohio or elsewhere, is working, compare their individual performance and with this insight, make adjustments to their infrastructure where necessary — such as increasing cooling temperatures, updating unreliable battery backups, optimizing capacity, etc. — so that the data center is running more efficiently and using less energy. Similarly, EcoStruxure IT allows managers insight into global data, so they can benchmark their data centers’ performance against others in the industry, and make adjustments.
The platform also helps with data center layout and infrastructure inventory on a highly granular level, so a data center manager in Tulsa not only knows that one of his cooling systems in his Tampa data center is failing, he knows exactly which one and where it is located in the facility. This insight optimizes operations not only for the human worker, but for the system as a whole by enabling operators to take swift action, versus spending all the time figuring out where the cooling issue is and wasting facility energy on an asset that isn’t working.
“Bringing this level of visibility and access to our customers will enable them to benchmark their entire IT ecosystem while providing trend analysis, intelligent maintenance and more, all while reducing risks and increasing efficiency,” said Dave Johnson, executive vice president of the IT Division at Schneider Electric.
Schneider Electric made news recently when it won Environmental Leader’s 2017 Project of the Year award for implementing its building analytics solution in Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium, resulting in the site saving 406,708 kilowatt-hours during the first 18 months alone.