IoT World CxO of the Year

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Since the publication of this blog, I am happy to announce that Kevin Brown has received the IoT World CxO of the Year Award! Thank you to everyone who made this accolade possible and congratulations again to Kevin for this well deserved recognition.

When it comes to true innovation, maintaining an unrelenting mindset to uncover and detect a customer’s latent needs is paramount. In the last 13 years, I’ve witnessed this mindset in action when I collaborate with Kevin Brown, SVP of Innovation and CTO, Secure Power, Schneider Electric.

One of Kevin’s favorite quotes to share when it comes to new product development is from Henry Ford, who famously said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Kevin approaches his innovation with just this type of thinking – he listens and studies our customers, their work, their behaviors and sees their pain points and areas of improvement as opportunities for innovation. Whether it was our mission to design data centers that are more predictable and delivered faster, installed faster, or today’s proliferation of micro data centers at the edge, Kevin, like Henry Ford, has always seen the car through the horses.

That is one of the many reasons Kevin has been nominated as IoT World’s CxO of the Year.

Of course, I have my own lengthy list of reasons why you should stop what you are doing and take a minute out of your day to vote for him. Seventeen leaders in our industry have been nominated for this honor, which popular vote will decide, but I believe none of the nominees are as deserving of this recognition as Kevin.

And, here’s where IoT comes in…  As IoT and edge drive the need for more resilience, Kevin has driven our organization to leverage IoT, big data, and AI to identify how to efficiently and effectively deliver, manage, and service edge solutions to achieve this goal. Kevin and his team are overcoming challenges to bring theoretical solutions to life and driving innovation for a company that embodies technology everywhere, touching and improving lives every day.

Leveraging Schneider Electric’s full portfolio to enable IoT everywhere

In his role, Kevin has a ‘front row seat’ to the convergence of IT and OT. He heads the research and development portfolio and leads a talented team of experts focused on innovation and embracing the disruption our industry faces. IT energy consumption is forecasted to grow twice as fast as all other electrical consumption globally, so his team’s goal is to enable IoT while keeping sustainability and energy efficiency in mind.

In this, Kevin asserted that the data center industry must leverage IoT in the management and operations of the data center. He was the driving force and vision behind our launch of EcoStruxure IT, the first cloud-based management platform purpose-built for hybrid IT and data center environments. The vendor-agnostic architecture delivered new standards for proactive insights on critical assets that impact the health and availability of an IT environment. It was designed to deliver visibility and insights on an open platform that allows for all devices and sites to be managed at anytime from anywhere.

Prior to his current position, Kevin served as VP, Data Center Global Strategy and Technology, responsible for over $400 million in small data center solutions at that time. He conceived a global, cross-discipline team, internally called “Project Cumulus” to produce full power and cooling infrastructure reference designs for large data centers. Today, the Cumulus team is providing technical expertise with data center customers representing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Additionally, the team developed and publicly released the industry’s first library of over 80 data center reference designs. These designs are now utilized as a core data center training tool across the globe.

We know that Schneider Electric’s technology is the first layer of reliability for all industries – from smart buildings and homes to health care, energy, oil and gas, agriculture, and more. We are one of the only companies worldwide that offers a broad portfolio of OT solutions – from full power infrastructure to building management, industrial control, and data center infrastructure. Kevin leverages this full portfolio to enable IoT everywhere.

No one says it better than Kevin Brown himself

Here are links to a few of his blogs and videos on IoT, edge computing, and more:

• The Next Big Thing in Data Center Management for IoT, the Edge, and Big Data is Already Here
• Connected Products Gone Wild and My Garmin Vortex: IoT stuff you need… and some stuff not so much…
• Learn from the Experts Video: Rethinking Data Center Resiliency at the Edge of your Network

Voting for IoT World CxO of the Year ends May 8th. Please join me in voting for Kevin Brown.