ABB has announced the general availability of ABB Decathlon® for DCIM - Education Edition, a data center infrastructure management solution that enables schools to attain maximum reliability, energy efficiency and optimal utilization of all data center assets. The proliferation of mobile applications used in all facets of education, as well as the movement toward massive online open courses (MOOCs), have put data centers in the spotlight with institutions of higher learning.
Decathlon for DCIM - Education Edition includes:
- Special pricing on deployment for accredited academic institutions
- Real-time power monitoring for both power and cooling systems
- Energy-wise reports to help with energy savings and forecasting
Colleges and universities increasingly rely on the school’s data center operations for essential services like student registration, admissions, financial aid, and call centers, as well as for innovations in learning, such as online classes, collaboration tools, and secure storage and file sharing. Only a decade ago colleges and universities were grappling with standalone servers and distance learning technologies. Today, in the new era of increasingly connected and virtualized systems, they are managing sophisticated data centers and supporting the large audio, video, and data needs of MOOCs.
“The general public doesn’t realize that our college data center must deliver highly reliable online services just like any enterprise data center,” said Rick Penny, director of administrative technologies at Lakeland Community College in Northeast Ohio. “We’ve implemented single sign-on, video on-demand, media sharing and collaboration forums. And, just like the enterprise sector, we face challenges with managing power and cooling, forecasting capacity, and ensuring reliability. To improve the reliability of our data center services and to help curb our operating expenses — especially energy consumption — we rely on ABB Decathlon.”
How do schools benefit? By providing visibility into system availability and performance; enabling capacity management of power, cooling and space; automating workflow processes and more. Decathlon ensures data center services are available and systems are running at optimal conditions. Anthony Joy, Lakeland associate director of administrative technologies, explained, “We’re still learning all of the things that Decathlon can do for us. With our new data center, our first task is to begin building an energy baseline. Decathlon has already helped us make quick improvements — like correcting an airflow problem that showed our return-air temperature was lower than expected. You can’t fix what you can’t see. Decathlon provides the visibility we need to improve our efficiency tactics.”
All of this translates directly into savings that can be realized through lower energy bills, which can amount to a significant portion of a school administration budget. Also, it helps defer capital expenditure, such as reducing the waste of under-utilized servers or outmoded equipment that cost more to run and maintain than newer efficient models.
To learn more about ABB Decathlon for DCIM - Education Edition, visit www.abb.com/datacenters/decathlon.
