Emerson and IBM Combine Software Capabilities to Optimize Data Center Efficiency and Service Management

DCIM is an essential component for businesses that have high quality of service demands for information technologies and need to scale quickly. An estimated $450 million market today, DCIM is expected to grow to $1.7 billion by 2016, according to industry analyst firm Gartner.

Emerson customer Brocade is one of many IT-intensive businesses struggling to solve growth-related infrastructure challenges. The company recognizes the value of combining DCIM and ITSM capabilities in providing information and metrics to support the strategic resource allocation and investment required to meet future needs. “‘Do more with less’ has become standard operating policy in IT and data center environments. At the same time, the mix of physical and virtual assets is growing exponentially,” said Valery Sokolov, senior manager, Engineering Lab Services, Brocade. “Because of these trends, there is a real business case for tools and applications that will provide the visibility and metrics required to manage IT resources and facilities provisioning efficiently and productively. This is where DCIM and ITSM applications become critical to provide the data required to achieve that goal, as well as to plan and model growth.”

Integrating IBM software with Emerson’s Trellis platform will provide real-time visibility from IT applications, through infrastructure components, and all the way to the power grid, enabling holistic management of the data center ecosystem. This information can be used to improve energy efficiency and space and capacity utilization, enable rapid problem management and resource provisioning, and improve operational efficiency, all of which reduce the risk of downtime and enhance the delivery of IT services.

Industry analyst firm IDC, which has been studying the DCIM market since its inception, believes this integration can deliver customer benefits. “The combination of Emerson’s real-time infrastructure optimization capabilities in the Trellis platform and IBM’s suite of enterprise system management capabilities has the potential to help IT and facilities teams deploy a comprehensive data center infrastructure management solution to increase energy and operational efficiency,” said Jennifer Koppy, research manager, IDC.

The combined capabilities of Emerson’s Trellis platform and IBM software will also enable data center managers to understand the true costs of running an application with metrics like watts per workload, calculate its resource demands in real-time, and dynamically provision physical and logical resources to support the application efficiently and cost-effectively.

“Managing the physical constraints of available space and power in the data center is becoming a greater challenge for organizations. This, combined with the increasing demand on the enterprise for reliable and agile IT services, makes finding a cost-effective solution critical for our customers,” said Jamie Thomas, vice president, Tivoli strategy and development, IBM. “The combination of Emerson Network Power’s market-leading DCIM solution – the Trellis platform – along with our solutions for IT service management and systems management, is an ideal way to meet these customer needs with innovative capabilities.”

Steve Hassell, president of Emerson Network Power’s Avocent business, added: “Aligning our DCIM capabilities with IBM’s software capabilities enables data center managers and IT and facilities leaders to see, decide, and act across all resources. This collaboration with IBM is a strong validation of our DCIM strategy and the ability of the Trellis platform to improve how data centers are currently managed and operated. Our collaboration will span engineering, development, and go-to-market strategies, and we are making significant investments to realize the full potential of our work together.”

As part of this collaboration, IBM will resell the Emerson Trellis platform as its DCIM solution. Details of the Trellis platform integration roadmap with IBM Tivoli software will be available in March at the IBM PULSE 2013 conference.