Efficient Plant December 2017 - 10

department | news

NEWS
ABB Partners
With HPE
To Improve
Industrial-Plant
Insight
A NEW STRATEGIC global partnership between ABB (ABB.com, Zurich,
and Cary, NC) and Hewlett Packard
Enterprise (HPE.com, Palo Alto, CA)
combines the digital offerings of ABB's
Ability technology with HPE's hybrid
information technology (IT) solutions.
Announced at the recent HPE Discover Conference (hpe.com/events/discover/) in Madrid, the alliance aims to
provide end users with solutions that
increase the efficiency and flexibility of
their operations and create competitive
advantage.
According to the two companies,
customers are expected to benefit
from ABB's deep-domain expertise in
operations technologies (OT) and HPE's
leadership in IT. Among other things,
the partnership will allow ABB Ability
solutions to run on hybrid platforms
such as HPE ProLiant for Microsoft
Azure Stack, enabling customers to
deploy applications to their preferred
location, i.e., on HPE infrastructure in
industrial plants and data centers or in
the Microsoft Azure public cloud, to
meet the specific requirements regarding performance, security, or cross-site
collaboration.
Learn more about this development
and others at hpe.com/events/discover/.
- Gary Mintchell

| EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM

Vertiv Lists 2018
Data-Center Trends
ACCORDING TO VERTIV (vertivco.
com, Columbus, OH), the next-generation
data center will exist beyond walls, seamlessly integrating core facilities with a more
intelligent, mission-critical edge of network.
While they are emerging now, these types
of operations are expected to become the
model for IT networks of the 2020s. This
growing data-center trend is just one of five
that a global group of experts from Vertiv,
formerly Emerson Network Power, have
identified for 2018. The list includes:
Emergence of the Gen 4 data center:
Whether traditional IT closets or 1,500
sq.-ft. micro-data centers, organizations are
increasingly relying on the edge. The Gen 4
data center holistically and harmoniously
integrates edge and core, elevating these
new architectures beyond simple distributed
networks.
Cloud providers go colo: Cloud adoption
is happening so fast that in many cases
cloud providers can't keep up with capacity
demands. In reality, some providers prefer to
focus on service delivery and other priorities
over new data-center builds, and will turn
to colocation (colo) providers to meet their
capacity demands.
Reconfiguring the data center's middle
class: The greatest areas of growth in the

The next-generation
data center will exist
beyond walls, seamlessly
integrating core facilities.

data-center market are in hyperscale facilities-typically cloud or colocation providers-and at the edge of the network. The
growth of those resources means traditional
data-center operators have the opportunity to reimagine and reconfigure facilities
and resources that remain critical to local
operations.
High-density (finally) arrives: The datacenter community has predicted a spike in
rack-power densities for a decade, but such
increases have been incremental at best.
That's changing. While densities less than
10 kW/rack remain the norm, deployments
at 15 kW aren't uncommon in hyperscale
facilities and, in some instances, are inching
toward 25 kW.
The world reacts to the edge: As businesses shift computing to the edge of their
networks, critical evaluation of facilities
housing these resources, as well as security
and ownership of the data therein, is needed.
Governments and regulatory bodies will be
increasingly challenged to consider and act
on these issues.
Learn more about these trends at vertivco.
com/en-us/about/newsroom/corporate-news/
vertiv-anticipates-advent-of-gen-4-data-center-in-look-ahead-to-2018-trends/.
-Jane Alexander

DECEMBER 2017

http://www.ABB.com http://www.HPE.com http://www.hpe.com/events/discover https://www.vertivco.com/en-us/about/newsroom/corporate-news/vertiv-anticipates-advent-of-gen-4-data-center-in-look-ahead-to-2018-trends/ http://www.hpe.com/events/discover/ http://www.EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Efficient Plant December 2017