Value of integrated systems at the edge: Schneider

At the recently held event conducted by Schneider Electric in Singapore, Kevin Brown, Senior VP Innovation & CTO, Secure Power Division, Schneider Electric, pointed out that when you look at downtime, the business impact is very apparent. Among the businesses, tier 1 has 28.8 hours of downtime, 22.7 hours of downtime in tier 2, while tier 3 has 1.6 hours, and tier 4 has 25 minutes, respectively.

Edge sites must be treated like mission-critical datacenters. There should be no unsecured racks, redundancy, lack of dedicated cooling, monitoring/management, and lacking local staff. The industry needs to have an integrated ecosystem. There should be better management tools. There must also be analytics and AI to augment staff. A collaborative ecosystem addresses unique edge challenges, such as many sites and lack of onsite staff.

Conventional management tools are inadequate to address challenges at the edge. Today, management tools need to be cloud-based. It is easier to get started. Access from anytime, anywhere. Pay as you grow model prevails. It is also maintenance free with security getting updated constantly.

AI is needed to deploy and manage analytics. There must be a secure, scalable cloud architecture. There has to be a data lake with massive amounts of normalized data. a talent pool of subject matter experts with deep knowledge of system behavior is required. Besides, you need access to ML algorithm expertise.

A solid foundation is critical. You need to aggregate data securely and create specific AI use cases. There is a need to identify the critical variables. You also need to have a health scorecard that consolidates and prioritizes what needs action.

AI will enable better insights. Cloud-based software is imperative to managing the edge. A strong industry foundation for applying AI will address the unique management challenges.

Edge and integrated systems
Jim Simonelli, Senior VP, Emerging Businesses, Secure Power Division, Schneider Electric, said that integrated systems at the edge is the topic today. There is a need to deliver complete systems often, including IT. There is an alignment of the integrated systems to the EcoStruxure architecture. Rules-based solutions are bringing together the elements across the EcoStruxure stack.

Today, the edge exists in three general types of environments -- industrial and harsh environments, commerical and office environments, and IT environments. Schneider is offering a complete portfolio for all edge environments. Edge solutions are customizable to the various IT use cases. You can customize your deployment, security, and management and services.

Schneider Electric has a global supply chain and network of service teams and partners to support the deployment of the edge solutions how and when you need it. IoT is enabling end-to-end, while simplifying the deployment and management of IT. Security of edge solutions is a key element to ensuring availability, including physical security, surveillance and environmental monitoring.

Edge environments present two unique challenges as well, to manage multiple, remotely managed sites and unstaffed sites. EcoStruxure IT cloud-based software is vendor nuetral. Integrated systems are being deployed at scale, across retail, education, and automotive, for example.

Simplifying life at the edge

Chi Sen Gay, Director, Digital Services & Datacenter Software, Secure Power (International, China, Europe) spoke about simplifying life at the edge with cloud-based management software. People cannot tolerate slow performances. It all started with cloud computing. It was meant to simplify the lives of the CIOs.

Now, capacity is spreading from the core to the edge. We need advanced software and automation to manage the edge. Conventional management tools are inadequate to address the edge challenges. We look at how customers can reduce complexity to improve the IT excellence. Cloud-based management software is required to collect and analyze, remotely monitor and manage, scale management systems, and achieve better performance with predictive capability.

Schneider Electric's EcoStruxure IT software is the next-generation datacenter infrastructure management (DCIM) solution. The EcoStruxure IT Expert has visibility across the hybrid IT environment. The solution optimizes the infrastructure performance, mitigate risks, and enable the ecosystem. It is optimized to manage the edge.

The EcoStruxure IT Advisor is a cloud-based DCIM solution. It provides asset management capabilities and in capacity planning. It also provides analytics-based actionable insights.

Right now, 50% of the energy consumption in the data center is used for cooling the IT equipment. ASHRAE recommends operating the DC at a temperature range between 18-27 degrees C in the inlet of the server.