Why is Schneider Electric the Right Choice for Prefabricated Data Centers?

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According to industry analysts, 451 Research, prefabricated modular data centers are evolving rapidly and beginning to win mainstream support. In fact the analyst states that “prefabrication is ready to transform the data center world.” Factors which underpin this shift towards prefab include “credible products and suppliers” for most applications, as well as some high profile case studies. But prefab, in the widest sense of the term, has been available to the data center community for a while now (451 Research says it’s had a prolonged infancy), and some of the solutions providers are household names. So I asked Scott Neal, product marketing director for Prefabricated Solutions, whether Schneider Electric was the right company for customers to back.

Scott told me, “We’ve got the capability to deliver on five things: Number one, We’ve got proven experience – we have a broad range of product offer from a prefab stand point, the modules themselves, the detailed designs for those modules. Number two, we’ve got global capabilities from an engineering perspective. Three, we’ve got management perspective. Number four, we’ve got market leading DCIM software – StruxureWare for Data Centers – pre-integrated into the modules, so the modules are instrumented and ready to go with any building management system (BMS). And the fifth one would be the library of Data Center Reference Designs, pulling everything together. Schneider Electric has got prefabricated reference designs in different forms and in different sizes and ranges to bring together a whole prefab solution and to provide a complete data center operation for the customer and therefore simplifying the data center overall from the full life-cycle, from the design to operations”.

I asked Scott whether he believed that a company of the size and scale of Schneider Electric is important to give customers confidence in what, after all, is quite a conservative industry?

Scott replied, “Yeah, the key thing is that we are not going anywhere, we’re a big company, we’re comfortable in the market place and we continue to bring new solutions and new value to the customer. This is still a pretty immature market in general, it’s still growing so there are a lot of players that are new to the business as a whole and although the capabilities may be there, the comfort level for a lot of customers is that this is a new product, a new concept, and when you see a lot of players in it, it doesn’t give them a lot of confidence that this is growing or that this is a real solution. With Schneider Electric coming in and bringing global capability it really gives our customers that comfort level that allows prefab to be able to grow and become a real solution for the customer.”

Recently, Schneider Electric has made two important announcements regarding prefabricated modular data centers: Just prior to DatacenterDynamics London 2013, the company set a new standard with the introduction of 15 prefabricated data center modules and 14 new prefabricated Data Center Reference Designs. The reference designs detail complete data centers scalable in 250kW to 2MW increments and meet Uptime Tier II and Tier III standards. The new prefabricated modules deliver IT, power, and/or cooling integrated with best-in-class data center infrastructure components and StruxureWare™ Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software for an easy-to-deploy, predictable data center. Prefabricated modules range in capacities from 90kW to 1.2MW and are customizable to meet end user requirements.

Early in 2014, Schneider Electric announced the acquisition of AST Modular, a Barcelona-based maker of prefabricated modular data centers and data center infrastructure components. Set up in 1999, AST was one of the first entrants into the prefab marketplace and is considered a pioneer in containerized solutions. You can read more about the important addition of AST Modular to the Schneider Electric family elsewhere on this blog.

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Conversation

  • Jorge Torres

    11 years ago

    I am interested in receive technical and commercial information on prefabricated data centers. I am a consultor on telecommunication and I have a project for the construction of a small data center in Central America.

  • I am interested in actually seeing an Uptime Tier Certified Modular Data Center from Schneider Electric…

    • Jennifer Wendt

      11 years ago

      HI Jay
      Thanks for reaching out to us. We have a case study on this blog : Supernap 8, a data center from the provider Switch, became the first multi-tenant data center to earn Tier IV Constructed Facility certification this past February.
      You can read more here : https://bit.ly/supernap

      I hope this answers your question!
      Jennifer

  • lex coors

    11 years ago

    The risk with modular approaches is “inefficiency” either in energy efficiency or CAPEX pre-investment, let me explain.

    Even for a modular approach with Pre-fabricated modules it is key to have the future plan ready to avoid that you either build with too small independent of each other modules which may create a large inefficiency when not fully utilized or to find your self in a position where you plan for a too high future capacity and have to invest too much on the first modules that eventually will be able to share the load accross the other 2 , 3, 4 ….modules

    • Steven Carlini

      11 years ago

      Thank you for your comments Lex. As we all know, planning and designing a data center whether prefab or stick built, the goal is to size appropriately initially, and then adapt to the changing business needs to ensure optimal use of CaPex and maximum efficiency utilization. The same risk or challenge is inherent in both approaches. The benefit of utilizing prefabricated modules is the speed of design and deployment, inherent scalability, and predictability of performance and predictability of cost. The benefit of using Schneider Electric prefabricated modules is the wide breadth and granularity that enables you to optimize not only your initial installation to prevent oversizing, but also subsequent scaled modules that can be installed in larger or smaller increments of the initial modules. I know I am simplifying this tremendously, but the breadth and depth of the Schneider portfolio is what differentiates us from the other “one size fits all” vendors and also enables the data center designer and operator to mitigate any CapEx or electrical performance inefficiencies. By-the-way,a trade-off tool is available at http://www.apc.com/tool/?tt=17 to help customers understand if prefabricated solutions are a good choice for their specific requirment – a recommended first stop for anyone interested in evaluating prefabricated solutions. Thanks.

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