Power management company Eaton has launched a new digital solution within its Brightlayer Data Centers suite to boost uptime, performance, and sustainability for data center operators, integrating asset management, IT and OT monitoring, and power supervision in one application.

“Point solutions are no longer sufficient to provide data center operators the visibility they need into their increasingly complex ecosystem of IT and OT assets,” says Mike Jackson, global director of product, data center and distributed IT software at Eaton. “This is especially the case as operations expand beyond the core data center to hyperscale, multi-tenant and various types of edge locations. The new solutions in our Brightlayer Data Centers suite leverage a single, native application to manage, monitor and control a wide range of infrastructure assets while providing seamless integration with other software and a simplified way to expand software capabilities as an operator’s needs grow.”

Data center operators are increasingly using data for sustainability due to pressures to decrease carbon footprints. In fact, 40% aim to use digitalization to cut energy costs, and over one-third are looking to reduce waste. An Eaton-commissioned report by S&P Global Market Intelligence supports this, and 46% of operators plan to use digital methods to monitor sustainability goals.

Eaton’s Brightlayer Data Centers suite provides a single application to manage, monitor and control critical site power management assets. These include uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs), power distribution units (PDUs), switchgear, generators, cooling equipment, battery storage, solar equipment and more. The platform offers three solutions that can be used alone or together based on customer needs:

  • Data Center Performance Management software: Monitors assets; provides trends, alerts and reports; and manages power, space, connectivity and cooling resources to maximize IT application uptime, all while minimizing capital and operating expenditures.
  • Electrical Power Monitoring System software: Delivers real-time and historical visibility into a data center’s electrical power system to quickly resolve and identify the root cause of unexpected issues and understand a facility’s use of water, air, gas, electricity and steam to reduce operating costs and meet sustainability goals.
  • Distributed IT Performance Management software: Manages and controls network-connected assets such as PDUs and UPSs, regardless of vendor or where they are located, and proactively identifies and automates actions to prevent IT equipment from going down. With cybersecurity protection built in, users can execute remote firmware upgrades and configuration changes to safeguard critical data from potential cyber threats.

As customer needs change, the application allows for added features without data migration and can integrate with third-party software, enhancing efficiency, accuracy, and cost-effectiveness.