ATLANTA — Data centers help enable the online applications that people depend on for work, entertainment, and communications, but they require significant power to move information around the world. Honeywell and Vertiv will work together to create integrated solutions to optimize data center sustainability, resiliency, and operational performance. These solutions are expected to be available in 2020.
The partnership builds on Honeywell’s building management systems (BMSs), operational software, and safety and security products along with Vertiv’s uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs), power distribution, thermal management, infrastructure monitoring, and modular solutions to enable operators of hyperscale, large enterprise, colocation, and edge data centers to integrate multiple domains of data within a data center. The companies will leverage building data to optimize operations, reduce energy use and costs, and improve data center performance and sustainability.
“Data centers face similar challenges as other buildings that have disparate systems that were not designed to work together, but they experience these challenges on a greater scale,” said Vimal Kapur, president and CEO, Honeywell Building Technologies. “We look forward to collaborating with Vertiv to offer integrated solutions that make it easier for data center operators to distill the mountains of data they pull from their equipment into actions that create more efficient and environmentally friendly operations.”
“Business continuity is more critical than ever, with more people working, learning, and connecting remotely, driving a simultaneous explosion in data and demand for new data centers,” said Rob Johnson, CEO, Vertiv. “There is need and opportunity for data centers to be more efficient, reliable, and sustainable. Our collaboration with Honeywell will help us to collectively better serve our data center customers. Our offerings complement each other to provide greater value to data center operators.”
The companies’ initial focus will be on microgrid solutions for data centers to enable more efficient integration of alternative energy sources, such as solar arrays, fuel cells, and batteries, and to provide a scalable approach for operators to quickly enhance functionality and improve total cost of ownership.
The first offering from the collaboration will be an intelligent power management solution that features an energy resource management and supervisory control system in a single, integrated platform. Combining energy storage, analytics, forecasting, and economic optimization, the solution will provide data centers with intelligent and autonomous selection of energy sources and grid services to operate load and reduce energy costs while maintaining uptime requirements. The solution can help data centers meet availability requirements while optimizing energy costs, meeting corporate sustainability goals and reducing overall carbon footprint. It will also allow operators to better manage sustainability targets and account for external risk factors, such as weather and grid reliability.
