The U.S. data center industry is in the midst of a major growth period stimulated by increasing demand for data processing and storage. According to an Energy Star report to Congress, during the past five years, increasing demand for computer resources has led to significant growth in the number of data center servers, along with an estimated doubling in the energy used by these servers and the power and cooling infrastructure that supports them.
A key component of Panduit's unified physical infrastructure approach allows for integration and risk management by aligning and balancing critical systems - power, communication, computing, security, and control - throughout the enterprise. Many of the so-called pain points in data centers are a direct result of the current economic climate, with a major focus on energy costs and sustainability.
Panduit's vision for a unified physical infrastructure focuses on optimizing power and cooling resources to not only cut costs, but to maximize the potential of a data center's physical footprint in providing additional capabilities without having to invest in additional resources.
A key pillar of the company's UPI vision is cost reduction, whereby the scalability of platform capabilities provides cost‐effective growth as business needs change, including future software platform capabilities for power, cooling and space. In addition, it focuses on automated documentation that assists with industry compliance and reporting regulations, eliminating costly and time-consuming manual reports.
This comprehensive approach to infrastructure design, deployment and management allows benefits to be realized across the entire enterprise.
The company's physical infrastructure management solution gives businesses the ability to: minimize downtime; perform a rapid restoration of failed connections; respond faster to configuration changes; assimilate usage and connectivity data quickly; save costs associated with troubleshooting network connectivity problems; provide accountable records that can be used for regulatory compliance; and cost-effectively grow with the changing needs of the business.
A unified approach to physical and logical systems architecture is imperative to pave the way for solutions that address requirements for reduced risk, lower costs, increased agility and enhanced sustainability.
To learn more about Panduit's vision for a unified physical infrastructure, read this whitepaper.
In order to expand your data center's footprint, there are several different logical and physical elements that tie together to make such a deployment successful. The current trend in data center availability - as explained by Panduit's Marc Naese - is the evolution from 1Gig to 10Gig, and the company is even now starting to tackle requests for 40Gig and 100Gig systems. To echo Naese, understanding what these capacities look like is absolutely critical to understanding your physical infrastructure needs.
Alongside the trend for data centers to move from 1Gig to 10Gig, therein lies a tendency toward moving from traditional cabling to preterminated systems (plug and play), which provides the ability to get systems up and running faster, and ultimately reduce the mean time to repair when systems go down. Those are all important when you have an application go down - who has the time to wait two days for such mission-critical systems to be repaired? As performance in terms of speed and technology are catching up, companies have to get in front of their current and future data center needs.
As UPI reference designs are deployed, the greatest impact will be optimization, which ultimately results in significant cost-savings and efficiencies from multiple elements across the power communications and security environment. Cloud computing is also having an impact on data center design, which presents yet another invitation for systems to migrate to a fully interconnected infrastructure.
At first glance, one might think that Panduit is solely a huge manufacturer of the kind of hardware found in data centers and the network itself: cables, connectors, cabinets, racks, etc. In actuality, Panduit is also a developer and provider of industry-leading solutions that help customers optimize their physical infrastructure. The company's UPI-based solutions can help customer's reduce the carbon footprint of their data centers and intelligent buildings and optimize energy use and maximize resource efficiency across all operations.
In a recent interview with Panduit's Anil Maheshwari, he explained how the company's UPI vision is taking hold through a global commitment to helping customers meet their sustainability goals.
"Global footprint is a term we are using to refer to both our operational sustainability initiatives as well as UPI-based solutions that help customer's meet their sustainability goals," said Maheshwari, director of integrated marketing communications for Panduit. "Panduit has conducted numerous global road shows, seminars and webinars to explain to customers and partners the benefits of a UPI approach. We are enabling our partners through training to show how they can offer more value to the end customer and differentiation through UPI-based solution approach. The analyst community has also taken notice and we are working to deepen their understanding of the UPI vision."
Taking a holistic approach, Panduit is unique in that it will run all global business on one software platform out of a single data center, supported by Panduit's unified physical infrastructure solutions to optimize energy use and maximize resource efficiency across all operations. For businesses today, agility and performance are two pivotal factors that decide whether you will sink or swim. To remain competitive and ultimately succeed in an environment that demands faster, stronger service and performance within the data center, enterprises must be forward-thinking and harmonize their overall goals. It will determine whether you make it upstream and propel your company forward, or go under when the tides change.
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