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In this age of cell phones and communication via instant messaging, it’s good to see how productive and insightful face-to-face interactions with knowledgeable people can be. This year’s Innovation Summit held in Barcelona, Spain, presented technology end users, Schneider Electric business partners, industry analysts, and press with an open forum for sharing bold, new digitization ideas surrounding data center solutions, energy management, and business operations. Audiences represented a healthy mix of both IT and facilities experts.

There was a strong interest surrounding digitization best practices and the possible productivity improvement – and for good reason. According to the World Economic Forum, for every $1 invested in combined new digital technologies, a 120% increase in revenue per employee results.

Attendees also recognized the importance of partnership for optimal, digitized solutions. No one company can do it alone, no matter how big. One clear success factor is the right ecosystem of partners.

End Users and Partners Share Their Digitization Stories

During interactive learning sessions, participants discussed the latest energy trends and technological advancements which are helping to power our digital economy. Here are some of the advancements that garnered the most interest:

• HPE stresses the importance of converged IT when deploying edge computing – For HPE, converging data center technologies into new, smaller form factors helps address edge computing. I agree with them. When edge systems come equipped with integrated management tools, hardware, and software, remote support becomes much easier, especially when no on-site IT staff is available.
• Google explains how digitization impacts both their energy efficiency and maintenance – If anyone knows anything about data capture, it’s Google. I was impressed by the extent to which they utilize data-fed machine learning models to cut costs and drive efficiencies. Their data center monitoring model has been trained to both perform predictive maintenance and to improve energy efficiency.
• Sagrada Familia highlights how prefabricated data center solutions can dramatically shorten delivery times – The Sagrada Familia data center supports a UNESCO world heritage site and Catholic church in Barcelona, Spain. Sagrada Familia had been running their IT services from a server room with inadequate space for expansion. To accommodate their need for increased business process digitization and more security, they’ve opted for a prefabricated, modular data center that greatly shortened their deployment timing.
• Equinix stresses the importance of standardization in driving data center operational efficiencies – I always like to hear what colocation providers have to say as they are often on the forefront of data center technology. For Equinix, critical success factors include scale, intensity and dispersion. I can see why the standardization of the technologies they deploy is critical for addressing their challenges.

Secure Hardware, Software and Services Support Across Data Center Environments

The Innovation Summit also showcased Schneider Electric solutions which increase standardization, improve energy efficiency and enable faster speed of deployment. The way Equinix standardizes on Schneider Electric control systems and power distribution units, for example, helps them to both save money and improve performance through the traceability of data surrounding any piece of equipment in their installed base.

Our EcoStruxure Data Center Solutions, which bring together power, cooling, racks, and management systems, was a featured announcement. These solutions are applicable across environments that range from small edge applications to large cloud data centers. The on-going monitoring and management of these data centers is also critical, as was highlighted by HPE in their presentation. Our EcoStruxure IT Expert solution provides next-generation monitoring and management software for local edge, distributed IT, and large data center infrastructures. On the security front, we are also offering the newest version of this software to include access to a device security vulnerability assessment feature, which reduces the risk of a security breach. When threats are detected, the software helps users to engage in preventive measures sooner, so that data loss and business disruption are minimized.

Ready to Explore More?

Visit our website to learn more about how Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Data Center Solutions can help you cut costs and boost productivity through digitization. Also, please share your questions or comments about our digitization stories, I’m curious to hear how you believe it may impact your data center opportunities.

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