Schneider Electric’s roots are in electrical power. Known in the US through its acquisitions of Square D and APC, which were well known brands in building and IT power respectively. Of course it picked up Modicon a long time ago and more recently Foxboro on the control side. The software parts of its acquisitions were invested with AVEVA giving SE a majority stake in that engineering software firm.
The Schneider Electric and AVEVA ties are pretty strong as I have written before. This latest announcement blends AVEVA’s Unified Operations Center with SE’s EcoStruxure for Data Centers. The goal is to give data center operators a unified view across multiple sites. They will have the ability to connect disparate sites, platforms, and data sets to optimize how they view, operate and maintain their critical environments.
The new integration provides a homogenous view of engineering, operations, and performance so staff can make faster, more informed decisions to increase operation efficiency.
The intent further is to improve workforce productivity by standardizing and de-siloing systems and processes across multiple sites to deliver real-time decision making.
The rationale sees industrial organizations in all sectors producing vast amounts of data and, now more than ever, relying on data centers as the backbone of their operations. At a time when the world’s digital infrastructure is being pushed, a holistic view of all data center sites integrated with engineering, operations, and performance data can become a significant advantage for industrial companies to ensure their economic resilience.
I talked with Rashesh Mody, AVEVA SVP Monitoring and Control, who told me that as data centers are more geographically spread and complex today—with edge, regional, cloud installations—the problem is to connect sites, platforms, data sets in order to view, operative, maintain critical environments. Schneider Electric EcoStruxure for Data Centers are composed of three aspects of monitor and control: electrical power; IT racks, pods, A/C, security; and, building management. AVEVA unified operations center provides “single pane of glass” for all involved.
Schneider Electric seems to have completed it reorganization after several acquisitions—especially that of Invensys (Foxboro, Avantis, Wonderware, etc.) plus the AVEVA investment. Now it stands to reap dividends from gradually getting the pieces to develop together.
