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WEST KINGSTON, R.I. – June 25, 2012 – Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management, today introduced StruxureWare™ Data Center Operation v7.2, Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software that identifies underutilized and comatose servers enabling the optimization of IT equipment within the data center.  Updates to the Operation platform include the addition of IT Power Control, powered by Intel^® Data Center Manager (DCM), and the inclusion of the Cisco UCS™ Manager Plug-in.

“Businesses are increasingly looking to the data center for opportunities for optimization, which can be achieved through right-sizing and consolidating the physical infrastructure and optimizing the IT layer,” said Soeren Brogaard Jensen, Vice President, Solution Software, Schneider Electric.  “StruxureWare Data Center Operation version 7.2 provides crucial information for making key decisions on how to run data centers more efficiently.  The platform provides data center managers with the ability to operate, monitor, analyze and optimize the energy usage of a data center all the way down to the server and CPU levels, gaining significant CapEX and OpEx savings and extending the data center life cycle in the process.”

StruxureWare Data Center Operation v7.2 helps customers optimize the IT layer of the data center by focusing on actual IT power consumption rather than nameplate ratings, and by reducing the power and cooling required to support the IT layer.  The platform also provides an instant report on top power consumers, presenting data center managers with a list of servers that are likely candidates for upgrades, load sharing or retirement, as well as a report on underutilized and non-utilized servers, ultimately ensuring that server sprawl is reduced and ROI is improved.

New features of StruxureWare Data Center Operation v7.2 include:

• IT power and utilization monitoring determines the business usefulness for all IT assets and helps eliminate underutilized servers and maximize IT capacity at the rack, row and room levels.
• Underutilized server tracking reduces costs by eliminating unnecessary servers and maximizing efficiency and rack capacity.
• Server usage chargeback enables businesses to capture and assign IT costs to individual departments for accurate billing support down to the physical or virtual server level.
• IT asset auto-discovery saves time and increases accuracy of managed asset inventory.
• Auto-association automatically associates discovered IT devices with the inventory, based on properties such as make, model and IP address.
• IT asset monitoring continually discovers and monitors IT components through standard protocols for accurate and current inventory management.
• Genome™ library constantly growing asset library enables the software to determine power consumption without the aid of hardware sensors.
• Reporting capabilities provides reporting on underutilized servers, top power consumers and KPI data.

In order to provide customers with the most comprehensive DCIM suite on the market Schneider Electric has equipped the StruxureWare Data Center Operation v7.2 platform with a number of sophisticated and automated ways to keep track of inventory from any vendor, reported into one system.  Integrations with Cisco, VMware and the inclusion of Intel’s IT Power Control  technology all provide valuable support to the platform and greatly increase the flexibility to deploy StruxureWare Data Center Operation v7.2 in any data center.

IT Power Control, powered by Intel DCM, provides real-time, server-level data on power and thermal conditions within the data center, which allows StruxureWare Data Center Operation v7.2 to deliver comprehensive power and thermal consumption information to data center managers.

“The Intel DCM enables the StruxureWare IT Power Control module to continuously monitor the ongoing level of power and thermal consumption at an increased granular level, across a broad range of servers and IT devices," said Jeff Klaus, director, Intel Data Center Manager Solutions. “The technology integration, and the relationship between Schneider Electric and Intel DCM, should send a clear signal of confidence to large enterprise data centers still hesitant about DCIM technology.”

In addition to the existing VMware vSphere integration, version 7.2 adds the Cisco UCS Manager plug-in  which offers Cisco UCS customers a plug n’ play configuration that provides automatic inventory, proactive warnings, and real time data showing Cisco UCS power draw, CPU and memory usage. The plug-in allows customers to set the power cap for their racks with the knowledge of real-time physical capacity constraints, which ensures that the power and cooling loads are matched appropriately, optimizing the usage of the physical infrastructure and reducing over-provisioning, making customer’s data centers more agile.

StruxureWare Data Center Operation v7.2 is currently available as part of the complete StruxureWare for Data Centers software suite, available for demonstration at Schneider Electric’s corporate headquarters in Rueil-Malmaison, France as well as the Schneider Electric Technology Center in St. Louis, Missouri.  Please visit www.apc.com for more information on Schneider Electric’s complete line of data center software solutions.