At Hannover Messe, which will be held April 23-27, 2018 in Hanover, Germany, ABB, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), and Rittal will unveil the Secure Edge Data Center (SEDC) for industrial and telecommunications environments. This will allow customers to run enterprise-grade IT in close proximity to their operational technology (OT) environments, machines and equipment to enable low-latency, secure and reliable digital processes.

Gartner says that “currently, around 10 % of enterprise-generated data is created and processed outside a traditional centralized data center or cloud. By 2022, Gartner predicts this figure will reach 50%.”¹ Also, the market for so-called micro-modular data centers is growing rapidly. According to 451 Research, the market has seen an annual growth rate faster than 50% on average over the last three years and it will continue to expand with initiatives like 5G and the ongoing OT-IT convergence.²

Responding to this demand, the SEDC provides a turnkey and resilient data center environment optimized to operate in harsh environments. It enables customers to run data acquisition, analytics and control processes near industrial equipment to avoid the latency, security and reliability issues associated with data communication through remote IT systems.

The SEDC significantly simplifies the deployment of enterprise-grade IT solutions in industrial environments regardless of their location. It helps customers:

• Get started quickly — delivered as a factory-integrated and tested turnkey solution, fully equipped with pre-configured HPE software-defined infrastructure, the SEDC is ready to operate within twelve weeks
• Secure their digital processes — an IP55-rated³ enclosure, physically protecting against humidity, dust and dirt, with integrated cooling and fire suppression from Rittal and redundant power supply from ABB with backup power
• Easily scale their environment — the SEDC is easily expandable in steps of 5, 10, and 20 kW to support increasing IT workloads
• Digitize their industrial environments cost-efficiently and with economic flexibility — by providing enterprise data center functionality on the footprint of a standard IT rack, with flexible financing options such as consumption-based pricing
• Avoid downtime and on-site operations effort — the SEDC and its infrastructure can be remotely monitored and managed across all customer locations to ensure high availability without requiring specialized staff on site
• By equipping the SEDC with hybrid platforms such as HPE ProLiant for Microsoft Azure Stack, customers can deploy Azure-consistent applications to their preferred location – on HPE infrastructure in the
• SEDC or a data center, as well as in the Microsoft Azure public cloud — to meet their specific requirements regarding performance, security or cross-site collaboration.

The Secure Edge Data Center will be available in Europe from September 2018.

“ABB is very conscious that when our customers start their journey for new digital services and enter initiatives like IoT and Industry 4.0, they need a secure and stable infrastructure close to the operations. Our Secure Edge Data Center is providing them with those capabilities with an off the shelf proven data center solution,” says Ciarán Flanagan, head of Global Data Center Segment, ABB.

“More and more companies realize they have to equip their machines and plants with intelligence to capture the value of their industrial data. This requires running enterprise-grade IT systems at close range to the operational technology equipment, creating actionable insights and automatic action in real time,” says Volkhard Bregulla, vice president global sales, manufacturing, automotive, and IoT, HPE.

“Edge computing requires IT solutions that can be implemented rapidly and safely. With the SEDC, we provide our joint customers with a resilient, scalable and secure turnkey solution for the requirements of the Internet of Things and other low-latency scenarios. This gives us a broader reach to help enterprises quickly with high end complete datacenter solutions according to their needs.” says Andreas Keiger, executive vice president, Global Business Unit IT, Rittal.

1. What Edge Computing Means for Infrastructure and Operations Leaders, Rob van der Meulen, Gartner, October 2017.
2. Suppliers of micro-modular datacenters think big by going small, 451 Research, February 2018.
3. The IP Code, International Protection Marking, IEC standard 60529, classifies and rates the degree of protection provided against intrusion, dust, accidental contact, and water by mechanical casings and electrical enclosures. It is published by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). The equivalent European standard is EN 60529.