Schneider Electric Brings Big Data and IoT to Data Centers with EcoStruxure IT

January 8, 2018

Schneider Electric has announced EcoStruxure IT, the first Data Center Management as a Service architecture.

EcoStruxure IT revolutionizes DCIM by delivering a cloud-based architecture purpose-built for hybrid IT and data center environments. The vendor-agnostic architecture delivers a new standard for proactive insights on critical assets that impact the health and availability of an IT environment with the ability to deliver actionable real-time recommendations to optimize infrastructure performance and mitigate risk.

Key benefits include:
• Global visibility across the hybrid ecosystem – from anywhere – with one tap access right from a smartphone
• Device information, smart alarms and monitoring through open system collecting data from all devices regardless of vendor
• Foresight into potential risks by leveraging global benchmarks and analytics in the EcoStruxure data lake
• Ease of deployment through a convenient subscription model for any size environment
• 24/7 remote monitoring with the Schneider Electric Service Bureau. In the event of an incident, the Service Bureau helps troubleshoot and ultimately reduces mean time to repair

“The growing complexity and diversity of critical data center environments coupled with reduced budget and staff have led to a management challenge for data center professionals. The first step in overcoming this challenge is through a cloud-first management strategy. EcoStruxure IT provides global access and insights to data center environments from anywhere, at any time on any device,” said Dave Johnson, Executive Vice President, IT Division, Schneider Electric. “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.”

“DCIM is a critical component to software defined infrastructure,” said Jennifer Cooke, Research Director, IDC. “With a cloud-based innovation such as EcoStruxure IT, clients experience a simpler and more streamlined deployment, increased visibility to assets on and off premises and enables stronger remote management of distributed environments. “

EcoStruxure IT is the latest addition to Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure, its IoT-enabled, plug-and-play, open architecture, which delivers end-to-end solutions in six domains of expertise – Power, IT, Building, Machine, Plant and Grid – for four end markets, Building, Data Center, Industry and Infrastructure. EcoStruxure is driving digital transformation for Schneider Electric clients globally, enabling them to be competitive in today’s digital economy.

Rolling out to select geographies over the remainder of 2017 and into 2018, highlights of EcoStruxure IT include:
• Expert – strong>EcoStruxure IT Expert – Expert delivers visibility across the hybrid environment from anywhere with one tap access direct from any computer or smart phone with the Mobile Insights application. Data center and IT managers can benchmark performance against their own system or those across the industry for trend analysis, maintenance or failure prediction, efficiency comparisons and other measures.
• EcoStruxure IT Advisor – Advisor addresses the need for greater system optimization and inventory management for enterprise and colocation users. This enables superior control, planning and prediction across all site locations – on and off premises. Failing equipment can be located and addressed easily, reducing time to repair, and can be supported by Schneider Electric’s 24/7 remote monitoring Service Bureau.

As a part of EcoStruxure IT, Schneider Electric continues to offer StruxureWare for Data Centers, a self-contained on-premises monitoring and operations management solution, suitable for data center and IT deployments of all size and scale. Additionally, Schneider Electric offers a simplified process and tool for StruxureWare customers interested in migrating to the new EcoStruxure IT architecture.

As part of the launch, EcoStruxure IT was piloted in the U.S., benchmarking IT environments with more than 500 customers, 1,000 data centers, 60,000 devices and 2 million sensors. Customer feedback on the results of their EcoStruxure IT implementations affirm the growing need for a cloud-based data center management solution.

“ViaWest is trusted to deliver hybrid IT infrastructure solutions spanning colocation, interconnection, cloud, managed solutions and professional services to more than 4,200 customers,” said Daniel Harman, Building Automation Systems Engineer, Peak10 + ViaWest, Inc. “We chose Schneider Electric’s vendor agnostic EcoStruxure IT for one platform to monitor all the different devices in our data centers via their Mobile Insights application, remote services for replacing escalation policies internally, and the overall direction of their innovation roadmap.”