CHALLENGE- Greater Storage and Computing Capability
As society becomes more digital, including business-to-business commerce and consumer lifestyles, demand for data center services increases dramatically. This means more computing capability, greater storage capacity, bigger network connections — all of which takes energy. One of the key challenges the datacenter industry faces is to stay relevant by supporting environmental and financial sustainability.
Partnering with HPE, ABB is revolutionizing data center energy optimization by offering smart grid connections, off-grid electrification, power protection, and power management software. Integrating power optimization systems with sensor-enabled servers is central to the company's strategy. The goal is to create a data-driven, intelligently automated solution that balances data center operations with the most cost-efficient power sources in real time to maximize data center power efficiency for its customers.
This global strategic partnership combines ABB’s industry-leading digital offerings, with HPE’s innovative hybrid information technology (IT) solutions. The partnership provides customers with solutions that generate actionable insights from vast amounts of industrial data to increase the efficiency and flexibility of their operations and create competitive advantage.
SOLUTION- IOT For The Datacenter
Customers will benefit from ABB’s deep domain expertise in operations technologies (OT) and HPE’s leadership in information technologies (IT). ABB and HPE will deliver joint industry solutions that merge OT and IT to turn industrial data into insights and automatic action, combining widely-adopted cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure with IT systems running in corporate data centers and at the edge of the network. Employing the right mix of IT platforms will accelerate data processing in industrial plants and at the same time enable effective control of industrial processes across locations.
In a joint strategic initiative between ABB and HPE, the two companies are leveraging their respective technologies to design, market, and implement an intelligent, data-driven solution for enterprise customers to balance datacenter workload and power resources optimally. The ABB/HPE solution uses as many as 1,000 sensors embedded in HPE servers as IoT for the datacenter. The sensors gather key parameters such as temperature and workload, and HPE advanced orchestration sends this data to ABB power management software, which analyzes the data and responds as needed to optimize power usage.
Based on ABB analytics, the bidirectional HPE orchestration transmits instructions back to the data center and power equipment to achieve optimal balance — all in near real time. This may include switching off non-critical datacenter workloads or moving workloads to another datacenter with lower demand. The solution also incorporates power cost models, enabling customers to choose the most cost-effective power sources, dynamically switching from the grid to renewables, local DC generation, fuel cells or batteries.
RESULT- Energy-smart enterprise data centers
While ABB has a deep understanding of industrial processes and operational technology, HPE brings its IT software, solutions and platform offerings to the partnership. HPE and ABB deliver joint offerings for data centers, including data center automation to help control, monitor and optimize data center facilities infrastructure, as well as secure edge data center capabilities.
Intelligently connected IT reduces costs, optimizes datacenter operations. ABB’s datacenter customers dramatically improve their operational efficiency, reduce costs, and manage a more sustainable energy strategy with both local and grid-wide impact. Customers gain a real-time view of data center power demand based on workload, directly linked to the cost and source of energy. If the price of grid-supplied power rises during certain times of the day, the customer may use power stored on local micro-grids or hydrogen cells during peak periods, and switch back to the grid when rates are lower. The customer could also move workloads out of one data center to another one running during a low-rate period.
Audrey Cox
WW OEM Communications & Brand Awareness
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
