In addition to offering data center power monitoring solutions for data center managers, Server Technology (News - Alert) has been making its dent in the telecommunications market since the late 1990s.
“There was a market opportunity for the technology,” Server Technology’s Vice President Graham Leonard told TMCnet as to why the company decided to enter the telecommunications space. “We had the capability to build a product that gave people on/off control as well as power monitoring at the output level of a DC product.”
For the past decade, Server Technology – a leader in data center power monitoring technologies – has seen telecommunications customers turn to its products and solutions for help in managing power that supports traditional wired and/or wireless services to mobile devices; reducing operating expenses, enhancing reliability, achieving green initiatives, and remotely managing power to equipment.
Service providers who find themselves asking, ‘Who do I trust for mission critical reliability and remote power management solutions for my telecommunications operations?’ and ‘How do I reduce my operational costs while improving network reliability, uptime and service?’ can employ Server Technology’s solutions to address these concerns.
For the data center power monitoring company, they see requests for two problems: monitoring power at the rack or device level and reducing service expenses by having network based on/off control of individual devices at unmanned locations.
“These are not typically large installations whereas in the data center space an entity might have 100 to a 1,000 server cabinets in one location and they build a large, purpose-built data center,” Leonard said. “These are more point of presence locations and they are more diverse and spread out to support people’s wireless infrastructure. In many cases, they will be unmanned, so there isn’t an office at the location. Our equipment is used to monitor the power consumption at those locations as well as offer people the capability to cycle power on and off for devices at those locations.”
Server Technology also offers cost savings if, for example, an unmanned location has a problem with its switch and needs to be restarted. In a traditional space, one would have to send a technician out there to fix it and the company would suffer from downtime. With Server Technology’s solutions in place, however, one can cycle the power of that particular device to bring it back to life and, in so doing, reduce the length of downtime and eliminate the need for the service technician visit.
While 10 to 15 percent of Server Technology’s customers are in the telecommunications space, the telecommunications market did experience some hardship a few years ago. Recently, however, the market has surged again.
“There was a certain amount of wired infrastructure in the late ‘90s building out the Internet backbone and our products were primarily positioned to support the fiber connectivity as the Internet was being built out,” Leonard said. “Obviously that market went through a fairly depressed state after 2000 for several years.”
“What’s brought the market demand back amongst the carriers and the service providers is their building out of their wireless networks,” he added. “The market application has transitioned from supporting the wired infrastructure to supporting the wireless infrastructure.”
The market has also seen changes in the amount of power that is being used at locations.
“If you look at the evolution of Juniper or Cisco’s (News - Alert) products, the ones that are providing the network connectivity on the edge of their networks are consuming significantly more power today than they have in the past,” Leonard said. “In technical terms, our current generation of product takes a 100 Amp in feed but we have customers now asking us for 200 and 300 Amp in feed because the equipment that is at that location is drawing more power.”
“If there is a trend out there it’s being driven by the router companies and the switch companies, and we are keeping pace to be able to allow our customers to monitor and power those products,” he added.
Carrie Schmelkin is a Web Editor for TMCnet. Previously, she worked as Assistant Editor at the New Canaan Advertiser, a 102-year-old weekly newspaper, covering news and enhancing the publication's social media initiatives. Carrie holds a bachelor's degree in journalism and a bachelor's degree in English from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Rich Steeves