Joint Offering to Deliver Comprehensive Data CenterEnergy Services and IT Management to Meet Enterprises' Energy Conservation Needs
ISLANDIA, N.Y. and WEST KINGSTON, R.I. – October 2, 2008 – APC by Schneider Electric and CA, Inc. (NASDAQ: CA) today announced a partnership that will provide enterprise customers a fully integrated solution set for assessing and fully optimizing their data center energy consumption. APC will offer assessment services, integration services and physical layer management software. CA will provide enterprise-level monitoring and management software and related services solutions.
High energy costs and contracting budgets are making it increasingly important for companies to operate their data centers more efficiently. Energy costs, now about 10 percent of the average IT budget, could rise to 50 percent in a matter of years unless companies take radical measures.* As of 2006, the electricity use attributable to the nation’s servers and data centers is estimated at about 61 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), or 1.5 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption.** Due to escalating needs, this number is expected to increase. There are multiple efforts underway to reduce costs and conserve energy, but these all rely on the simple fundamental understanding of which systems are generating current demand and where there is capacity available. The combination of APC’s devices and CA’s ability to aggregate data provides new levels of insight to support this critical market need.
“Energy availability and consumption is now a major consideration in ongoing IT operations support,” said John Webster, senior analyst with Illuminata, an analyst firm specializing in mission-critical infrastructure. “This hardware agnostic market pairing is exactly the sort of relationship building we need in the IT energy conservation space.”
APC’s global Professional Services organization has deep experience in all aspects of data center energy modernization. The APC Professional Services team expertly audits existing data centers and advises customers with detailed plans for improvements to the physical infrastructure including power management and cooling solutions. APC’s vendor-neutral management software, InfraStruXure® Central, includes the ability to monitor devices such as temperature sensors, video, thermal, and other innovative technologies. When combined with APC’s Capacity Manager, customers will gain the additional capability to perform predictive simulation of changes to the data center to understand the impact on the power and cooling infrastructure before deployment.
“As part of the larger Schneider Electric family, we have a wealth of experience in all areas of data center and facility infrastructure so it is a natural fit for APC to integrate the energy, power and cooling elements into the CA Enterprise IT Management framework,” says John DiPippo, APC ’s senior vice president of Data Center Solutions, Services, and Software. “APC will not only help our joint customers with the integration of physical layer assets in the data center, but we can help them to better manage these assets as well. When combined with CA’s Infrastructure Management and Data Center Automation solutions, enterprise customers will have the capability to connect physical layer information to the dependent business processes enabling active energy management across their data center.”
CA’s world renowned CA eHealth Network Performance Manager (NPM) has been enhanced to manage data center power equipment, HVAC systems, fuel consumption, and other devices such as the thousands of temperature sensors needed to monitor individual rack temperatures. CA eHealth NPM has a long successful history of managing millions of IT assets worldwide. The product proactively pinpoints service degradations to enable corrective action before they affect users and business processes. When used with APC’s InfraStruXure Central, the enhancements to CA eHealth NPM will allow for the capture and integration of data from non-IT devices, providing dramatic improvements in the ability to monitor and manage the energy consumption of these complex systems.
“It’s a natural extension to enable CA eHealth NPM to manage performance of non-IT devices, particularly those related to energy and power optimization in the data center,” says Roger Pilc, corporate senior vice president and general manager of CA’s Infrastructure Management and Data Center Automation business. “We are excited to be incorporating energy management and optimization into our Infrastructure Management and Data Center Automation solutions.”
About APC
APC by Schneider Electric, a global leader in critical power and cooling services, provides industry leading product, software and systems for home, office, data center and factory floor applications. Backed by the strength, experience, and wide network of Schneider Electric's Critical Power & Cooling Services, APC delivers well planned, flawlessly installed and maintained solutions throughout their lifecycle. Through its unparalleled commitment to innovation, APC delivers pioneering, energy efficient solutions for critical technology and industrial applications. In 2007, Schneider Electric acquired APC and combined it with MGE UPS Systems to form Schneider Electric's Critical Power & Cooling Services Business Unit, which recorded 2007 revenue of $3.5 billion (EUR 2.4 billion) and employed 12,000 people worldwide. APC solutions include uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) , precision cooling units , racks, PDUs, physical security and design and management software , including APC's InfraStruXure® architecture, the industry's most comprehensive integrated power, cooling, and management solution. Schneider Electric, with 120,000 employees and operations in 102 countries, had 2007 annual sales of $25 billion (EUR 17.3 billion). For more information on APC, please visit www.apc.com. All trademarks are the property of their owners.
About CA
CA (NASDAQ: CA) is the world’s leading independent IT management software company. With CA's Enterprise IT Management (EITM) vision and expertise, organizations can more effectively govern, manage and secure IT to optimize business performance and sustain competitive advantage. For more information, visit www.ca.com.
* Dataquest, “The How and Why of Data Centers,” May 7, 2008
** Silicon Valley Leadership Group,Data Center Energy Forecast Executive Summary, July 29, 2008
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