Siemens Brings Clarity to Crowded DCIM Market

With more than 75 companies now offering tools under the wide umbrella of DCIM, it isn’t easy for a new player to make a splash. Unless that new player is global electronics and electrical engineering powerhouse Siemens, which has focused its ambitions on the data center and heading into DCIM in a big way.

Datacenter Clarity LC is the company’s foray into the world of DCIM (data center infrastructure management), a suite that combines management and facilities management functions. The company has thrown its muscle into this effort, boosted by a broad existing portfolio of data center solutions, a history in efficiency, as well as a global talent pool of engineers in support.

Meeting point between IT and Facilities

The DCIM solution unveiled last month, Datacenter Clarity LC, consists of engineering and lifecycle management software tools that ensure uptime while optimizing energy and operational efficiencies to accommodate the rapidly changing needs of today’s data centers.  It integrates information from both IT and facility assets, workflows and work orders, and conducts “what if” analyses.

“Datacenter Clarity LC can help you optimize capacity planning while driving operation and energy efficiencies,” said John Kovach, Siemens’ new Global Head of Data Centers.

Datacenter Clarity has an open API architecture facilitates interoperability with other systems. “Our vendor neutral solution supports more than 400 protocols from both the IT and facility perspective, giving customers total visibility of their data centers,” said Kovach.

Siemens Ripe for DCIM Play

Siemens’ DCIM power play wasn’t out of the blue. Siemens has an established track record in facility/enterprise infrastructure development, separately providing different aspects of data center infrastructure to customers over the years. The list of what the company provides isn’t short:

• Medium Voltage gear that connects the building to the utility grid.
• Low Voltage gear that distributes the power throughout the building.
• All the interconnecting controls to enable the Emergency Generators and UPS equipment.
• Complete Power Monitoring system that provides detail on the usage, power balance and consumption of the entire facility.
• Building Automation and temperature controls for the cooling of the facility.
• Fire and Life Safety systems to protect the people and equipment within in the building.
• Perimeter and physical security of the building to control access to the building, CCTV systems to provide visual images of the critical locations within the facility

The company sees a formal DCIM play as the logical evolution of its data center strategy, and is setting out to bridge the divide of IT and facilities management.

“The exponential growth and importance of data centers was leading to a need to bridge the growing “silos” of IT and facilities’ management of data centers,” said Kovach. “Having the two areas collaborate and work together was a constant challenge requiring a central system that would eliminate the inefficiencies that were developing from those separate silos.  This is the purpose of DCIM – and Siemens’ existing expertise in the different infrastructure areas, coupled with our established leadership in energy and operational efficiency, seemed a perfect fit.”