Emerson Network Power has partnered with HP on a joint solution that combines Emerson’s Trellis data center infrastructure management software and HP’s data center management consulting services.
The idea is to address the old problem of silos in data center management, where the IT team is completely separated from the facilities team, both losing out on the efficiencies that can be gained from managing the data center as a single entity.
HP’s Converged Management is a framework for integrating DCIM with IT service management. It’s about giving IT managers awareness of data center capacity – things like space, power, and cooling –and applications the IT gear is running and what business functions they are supporting. This knowledge, in real time, is what informs decisions about facilities management, planning out and executing changes, and automating processes.
HP is pitching the data center management framework for everyone, from enterprise and government operators to colocation and cloud service providers. Its consulting services include workshops, roadmap creation, designing the management architecture across IT, facilities, and service management, and implementation.
DCIM software plays a key role in the framework, since HP views it as the thing that bridges the gap between IT and facilities. Some of the more comprehensive DCIM solutions on the market combine capabilities like tracking what kinds of IT gear you have in which rack in the data center with capabilities like power consumption, temperature, and humidity monitoring across the data center floor.
Emerson’s Trellis is one of the DCIM suites that aims to have as comprehensive a feature set as possible. Its main competitor in the space is Schneider Electric, the other big data center infrastructure equipment vendor.
Rich Einhorn, vice president of HP Data Center Consulting, said the combination of Trellis and Converged Management consulting would help clients get more efficient without disruption to ongoing operations. “It also allows us to better integrate the DCIM system with software-defined IT platforms, such as HP OneView, making the operation between facility and IT seamless,” he said in a statement.
