Emerson Network Power Playbook Helps IT Leaders Build An Infrastructure That Adapts To Their Business

Advanced strategies can add capacity without a massive capital investment

Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson and a global leader in maximizing availability, capacity and efficiency of critical infrastructure, today released a CIO Playbook, “Creating an IT Infrastructure that Adapts to Your Business,” designed to help IT decision-makers learn how to cost-effectively build an infrastructure that can adapt to meet business needs.

In many cases, a lack of resources—investment in new or existing facilities or infrastructure, or lack of time to optimize existing systems—is the primary factor limiting organizational growth. “Creating an IT Infrastructure that Adapts to Your Business” poses questions and offers strategies to help IT decision-makers overcome some of those impediments.

“Limitations to the physical infrastructure—power, cooling and space—will always exist, but CIOs and data center managers have greater visibility into their networks and infrastructures than ever before,” said Peter Panfil, vice president, global power, Emerson Network Power. “With a more accurate understanding of the network’s true capacity, utilization and load criticality, CIOs can deploy technologies to more cost-effectively prepare for their future business demands.”

The Playbook explains that a deep understanding of the IT load, its criticality and available capacity can help businesses put together a plan that considers three key strategies for creating a more scalable, adaptable infrastructure:

• Use advanced technology or software to unlock existing capacity and scale up or down. Today’s power and cooling technologies have the capability to scale up and down as needed, or to support various applications that might be ramping up when others are cycling down. Understanding these patterns and optimizing utilization rates dramatically improves facility-wide energy efficiency and helps avoid bloated data centers.
• Scale up with building blocks. The introduction of self-contained, integrated and modular power and cooling systems—including everything from row-based UPS and cooling systems to large containers with complete infrastructures—makes incremental investment in infrastructure capacity possible. In some cases, that level of convenience and flexibility is enough to overcome some sacrifices in terms of capital and operational expenses.
• Just do it. If a data center has (a) reached the limits of its existing capacity; (b) exhausted its options for unlocking more; (c) run out of physical space to grow; and (d) eliminated outsourcing as an option, then the time has come to build a new facility—one with infrastructure technologies that enable intelligent, efficient IT growth that meets current and future business needs.

With a whole spectrum of choices available, budget-conscious businesses will use all the information available to them with today’s advanced technologies to ensure they make the right choice.

“Creating an IT Infrastructure that Adapts to Your Business” is available at www.EmersonNetworkPower.com/CIOtopics. Panfil’s podcast on the topic can be accessed at www.EmersonNetworkPower.com.

About Emerson Network Power
Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson, delivers software, hardware and services that maximize availability, capacity and efficiency for data centers, healthcare and industrial facilities. A trusted industry leader in smart infrastructure technologies, Emerson Network Power provides innovative data center infrastructure management solutions that bridge the gap between IT and facility management and deliver efficiency and uncompromised availability regardless of capacity demands. Our solutions are supported globally by local Emerson Network Power service technicians.

About Emerson
Emerson, based in St. Louis, Missouri (USA), is a global leader in bringing technology and engineering together to provide innovative solutions for customers in industrial, commercial, and consumer markets around the world. The company is comprised of five business segments: Process Management, Industrial Automation, Network Power, Climate Technologies, and Commercial & Residential Solutions. Sales in fiscal 2012 were $24.4B. For more information, visit www.Emerson.com.