ABB Pilots Automation Solution for Data Centres

A colocation data centre provider is piloting ABB‘s new data centre automation cloud solution, which aims to meet challenges faced by the rapid growth of data centres.

Optimisation of data centre performance, increased tenant retention, agile communications between operations and upper management, and reduced costs are some of the benefits claimed for the new ABB offering.

With a holistic data centre approach, the solution is said to provide a detailed insight into how multiple data centres and devices are performing.

By bringing all the information into one place, it offers a consolidated view of overall data centre performance both locally and globally.

The new solution is said to give increased accessibility provided by the state-of-the-art dashboards that display the data in a clear and comprehensive way. The insights result in better operational management providing optimisation of operations and business, says the company.

“This is an exciting new ABB Ability Data Center Automation solution and it is a world first,” said Madhav Kalia, global business manager, Data Center Automation of ABB Control Technologies.

“A leading colocation data centre provider in Singapore was the obvious choice with whom to work not just on the project pilot but also as a partner in development.

“Their world vision and leading market position meant that they were able to offer a very valuable, constructive contribution, including helping us to define the minimum viable product (MVP) requirements.”

One of the challenges faced by businesses today is how to mitigate the impact of data centres on the environment. ABB’s new solution enables power, cooling and environmental properties of data centres to be viewed and monitored, enabling the identification of opportunities for improvement.

The increased exposure of performance data to a wider audience including upper management, allows strategic operational decisions to be made based on accurate and up-to-date information.

By enabling KPI and metrics to be benchmarked and monitored, the new solution also provides insights into how these are changing over time, which enables the verification of effectiveness of performance improvements and optimisations, allowing any issues to be resolved.

Colocation data centres need to attract new tenants and retaining existing tenants. By allowing the asset allocation and performance of tenants to be evaluated, ABB’s new solution means that better Service Level Agreement management can be achieved, which, in turn, leads to more competitive offerings and pricing for tenants.