Internet Solutions (IS) has picked Schneider Electric, a global leader in critical power and cooling services, to boost its data centre solutions so that its clients receive superlative products, and peace of mind, when storing their critical business information at its facility in Randview, Johannesburg.
“As the leading African IP-based communications service provider, IS is constantly reviewing and upgrading its technology capabilities to ensure it can continually meet its clients’ growing requirement for uninterrupted system availability, and ensuring business continuity,” says Rennie Naidoo, senior operations manager at IS.
The most recent update to IS’s Randview Data Centre is Schneider Electric’s StruxureWare offering. “The holistic solution is ramping up our proactive management capabilities and service deliverables,” adds Naidoo.
According to Eben Owen, Enterprise and Solutions manager for South Africa at Schneider Electric, their modular data centre architecture simplifies the data centre process, from concept through deployment, in a predictable time and cost-efficient manner.
The architecture also features facility modules that can scale in increments of 500 kilowatts to match current and future data centre requirements. “The modular architecture matched our objective to install a solution that could support IS’s business growth well into the future,” says Naidoo.
IS has implemented Schneider Electric’s StruxureWare for Data Centres to assist with faultless data centre infrastructure management and to deliver on its “always available” promise to its clients.
“Schneider Electric has provided us with the technology to enable us to ensure excellence in service delivery to our clients as well as have a deeper understanding of our data centre space,” says Naidoo.
In short, the StruxureWare management software suite is designed to collect and manage information about a data centre’s assets, resource use and operation status throughout its lifecycle.
“This information is then distributed, integrated and applied in ways that help managers optimise the data centre’s performance and meet IT, business and service oriented goals. From IT assets to racks, rows, rooms and buildings, StruxureWare for Data Centres delivers the right information to the right users at the right time. Importantly, StruxureWare was created by people who build data centres daily,” says Owen.
StruxureWare is especially empowering for the data centre manager as it provides access to all of the data and tools needed to operate data centres that are more reliable, efficient, productive, safe and environmentally sustainable.
Naidoo highlights that, although today’s data centres still rely on a human interface, StruxureWare’s ability to detect faults before they happen as well as manage capacity and track trends before they escalate, allows for an unparalleled proactive management with minimal human error.
“Without a doubt, this is beneficial to data centre managers and clients alike as the resulting outcome of this is better system availability and thus business continuity,” he continues.
“Furthermore, StruxureWare maximises business performance for everyone as it merges operational and information technology. As an off the shelf solution it gives end users the opportunity to make individual modifications and customisations to the graphic user interface, adding to its value as a real time monitoring tool.”
Installation was completed in November 2013 by Dimension Data South Africa, an IT services company of which IS is a division.
Says Dewald Booysen, CTO for advanced infrastructure at Dimension Data: “As one of Schneider Electric’s elite partners, we have enjoyed a long-standing relationship with the company and value both its products and technological innovation. We look forward to monitoring the IS data centre implementation to evaluate the positive impact it will have on IS’s operational capabilities and delivery, especially in relation to its business development strategy.”
