Environmental Monitoring Channel Feature

Environmental Monitoring: ABB Enhances Data Center Monitoring Product Offering

By Anshu Shrivastava
TMCnet Contributor

In an effort to continue to offer comprehensive data center monitoring solutions, ABB announced that it will embed nlyte Software’s Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) suite as part of its ABB Decathlon Data Center Enterprise Management (DCEM) product offering.

nlyte Software is a data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solution provider, while ABB is a global provider of power and automation technologies.

Todd Goldman, vice president of product management of nlyte Software, said that ABB is including nlyte in the Decathlon Suite.

Data center professionals live in a heterogeneous world and, unlike many of the other power equipment manufacturers, ABB understands the value of taking a “best-of-breed” approach in helping customers optimize data center efficiency, Goldman said.

Extending the management of energy usage across multiple sites, the ABB Decathlon suite of products maximizes efficiencies with true enterprise visibility and reporting.

The nlyte suite will deliver a “unique” combination of intelligent capacity planning for the optimal placement of data center assets and business process automation that improves availability and operational excellence, enhancing the ABB offering.

“ABB is taking the approach of integrating best-in-class software by combining their real time power and control with nlyte Software's move/add/change management and what-if capacity planning,” said Andy Lawrence, research director at The 451 Group (News - Alert), adding that together they deliver a full set of capabilities for enterprise-class data center management.

The nlyte DCIM suite will be offered as part of the ABB Decathlon Data Center Enterprise Management solution, which is expected to provide data center professionals with facilities and energy management information.

In addition, it will also provide condition-based maintenance, service recommendation when equipment is not working to its fullest potential; data analysis of IT load patterns, weather forecasts, contract and utility data which is used to predict and adjust energy consumption in order to optimize usage against bill rates; and more.

"Our customers are comprised of some of the world's largest mission critical facilities," said Mike Heatherman, vice president of process automation control technologies for Americas at ABB Group.

Heatherman said that the nlyte DCIM suite provides them with industry best practices for optimizing the use of power, cooling and space through the optimal placement of data center assets.

Managing energy efficiency, power, temperature and other critical information is imperative for data center managers nowadays and one company that is making sure that you keep your tabs on the data center space is ITWatchDogs, a provider of environmental monitoring solutions.

Recently, Mo Sheikh, marketing programs manager for ITWatchDogs, shed some light on the most important things to monitor in the data center – including heat, temperature, water and humidity.

“Environmental factors like heat, humidity, airflow and electricity can be equally as devastating as viruses, spyware and other network threats,” Mo Sheikh, marketing programs manager for ITWatchDogs, said in a recent article. “Such conditions have a major impact on the reliability and longevity of servers and critical equipment in general.”