Schneider Electric launches first-ever physical IT infrastructure offering for SMEs
Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management, has announced InfraStruxure for Small IT: the first-ever industry offer enabling small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to design and build their physical IT infrastructures around the power of a comprehensive offering, including both software and hardware.
The InfraStruxure architecture, which now provides comprehensive solutions ranging from small IT environments up to two-megawatt data centres, had previously only been available to large enterprises. This new offering will speed up the deployment, configuration and installation of IT infrastructures in small environments, such as a server rooms, network closets or non-dedicated space.
“The rapid adoption of new business technologies and the influx of increasingly challenging amounts of data have made intelligent IT operations critical to any size business – not just large corporations. But because the industry primarily uses a component approach, current offerings do not address the growing complexity of critical, small IT spaces,” says Eben Owen, E & S manager for South Africa at Schneider Electric. “We’re excited to launch the first truly comprehensive solution to this problem by developing an integrated, simplified solution that consolidates vendors, reduces man-hours and enables remote device and environmental management.”
This customised solution will bring together the best components necessary to address the pain points that today’s small businesses face, such as pressure on human and financial resources; the increasing number of devices accessing and heavily straining corporate networks; and the lack of space to properly deploy small, smart IT environments.
Businesses will be able to design a tailored combination of uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, server racks, cable management, physical security, PDUs, cooling technologies, management infrastructure and software to elevate efficiency, leverage virtualisation and consolidation opportunities, reduce downtime, extend the life of equipment and slash extraneous energy consumption, waste and emergency shutdowns.
The simplicity of this highly scalable solution is found in the comprehensive design tools and solution guides, which educate and help VARs, ISVs, systems integrators and IT organisations smoothly deploy these installations and coordinate them to their respective spaces, technical challenges and growth needs – regardless of the level of IT experience and knowledge of staff.
The guides detail specific recommendations to meet challenges, explain various features and benefits, as well as provide the business justification and reasoning for implementation. To help customise each solution, Schneider Electric has developed two user-friendly design tools, including one to assist channel partners configure solutions for customers, and another publicly accessible web portal to help guide and educate customers on how to best solve their challenges.
After installation, the integration of individual outlet control, energy reporting and other critical management functions into one central dashboard, will allow IT managers and system engineers to achieve remote manageability, and in turn, tackle a plethora of chronic small IT management issues via remote monitoring and control of power systems, integrated environmental monitoring, proactive maintenance and alerts, and streamlined management of multiple devices and sites.
