The IT Solution Provider’s Toolkit for Remote Monitoring of Power and Cooling

As IT environments get more dispersed and diverse, managing your customers’ critical power and cooling infrastructure becomes harder. Visibility into a distributed IT hybrid environment isn’t as simple as monitoring a centralized data center, which creates challenges for businesses as they move to local and regional edge computing and deploy Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

Most organizations lack the staff and resources to manage a distributed IT environment with dozens, possibly hundreds, or even thousands, of locations. These locations need data center-like resiliency as many critical business applications are not tolerant of latency and require continuous uptime. Resiliency is also necessary for regulation compliance, particularly in heavily regulated industries, to protect the data of customers, clients, and patients.

Customers need help, and that’s a good thing for IT solution providers. Distributed IT and hybrid environments open opportunities for solution providers to solve a critical problem for end customers by delivering the technology and services to remotely monitor and manage their critical power and cooling infrastructure. This service also opens the door for a predictable, recurring revenue stream in an edge computing market projected to reach USD 6.73 billion by 2022 according to MarketsandMarkets.

Depending on each organization’s capabilities, customers may decide to leverage an IT solution provider to handle all or part of their infrastructure management. Solution providers can deliver various levels of support depending on customer needs. APC by Schneider Electric offers three options for providing visibility and troubleshooting for critical power and cooling infrastructure – SmartUPS with APC SmartConnect, EcoStruxure IT Expert and EcoStruxure Asset Advisor.

Start with the Basics: APC Smart-UPS with SmartConnect

APC Smart-UPS with SmartConnect is the first stepping stone to monitoring a connected environment. It includes a cloud-enablement feature that provides visibility into Smart-UPS units to track each unit’s lifecycle, alerting administrators to system maintenance and battery replacement requirements. This offer helps keep the customer’s power infrastructure healthy, potentially preventing costly unplanned downtime.

APC Smart-UPS with SmartConnect is designed to provide basic visibility to monitor UPS backup power availability. While it can be integrated into third-party remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools and Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure IT remote management offerings, on its own, it provides no remote management capabilities. This is a good solution for IT Solution Providers who have a smaller number of UPSs to manage.

Deliver Added Value: EcoStruxure IT Expert

EcoStruxure IT Expert builds on the SmartConnect model by delivering visibility and remote monitoring of the entire power and cooling infrastructure. It’s a vendor-neutral, cloud-based software solution that consolidates alerting capabilities, prompting administrators to react whenever necessary. This approach is ideal for the IT solution provider with a larger, more dispersed installed base.

With EcoStruxure IT Expert, customers can either monitor their own environments or engage an IT solution provider to deliver the services through a dedicated partner interface. EcoStruxure IT Expert enables IT solution providers to identify and diagnose issues, reducing the time and expense of sending someone to the site for remediation in most cases. In addition, EcoStruxure IT Expert provides access to a data lake containing benchmarking data that delivers insights to share with customers. This type of data allows IT solution providers to proactively manage their customers’ IT infrastructure to mitigate risk and reduce unplanned downtime.

EcoStruxure IT Expert’s inventory-monitoring functionality alerts administrators when a UPS unit is reaching obsolescence or a battery needs to be replaced, allowing partners to gather data on system performance and maintenance history. Solution providers can use this data to provide lifecycle management recommendations to customers. It’s a predictable recurring revenue opportunity that also opens a path to a stickier business relationship.

Available by subscription, EcoStruxure IT Expert delivers the flexibility of a pay-as-you-grow model, giving IT solution providers a predictable recurring revenue stream as their customers grow, and future-proofing their business as they scale services.

Deliver 24/7 Services: EcoStruxure Asset Advisor 

IT solution providers that don’t have an in-house Network Operation Center (NOC) to provide their customers with 24/7 remote monitoring and management support for their power and cooling infrastructure can leverage Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Asset Advisor service. It is also useful for IT solution providers who are growing and may want to augment their existing NOC and relieve pressure on current staff. Whenever there’s an issue with a UPS unit, Schneider Electric’s expert service bureau provides a second set of eyes to remotely monitor and manage critical power and cooling infrastructure and make recommendations to resolve any issues or problems. IT solution providers can choose to leverage EcoStruxure Asset Advisor either 24/7 or only when they need it.

Access Resources to Monitor Hybrid IT Environments

These various solutions for monitoring and managing hybrid IT environments are designed to equip IT solution providers with the right tools to offer their customers the level of services they need and, as such, provide Certainty in a Connected World. Visit our EcoStruxure IT for Partners site to learn more about potential opportunities for your business.