As pressure mounts on CIOs to measure energy consumption, DCIM becomes an essential tool for sustainability

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Forrester has issued a report– The Forrester Wave™: IT Sustainability Service Providers, Q3 2023 – and it includes Schneider Electric. If you want the details of the report, you will need to purchase it or be a Forrester subscriber, but simply by putting Schneider Electric in the mix, we believe Forrester is reinforcing what we have been saying about sustainability and the importance of Data Center Infrastructure Management software (DCIM).

Recently, CNBC reported that “the pressure coming from consumers, investors and regulators alike will continue to drive ESG and corporate sustainability issues into the minds of executives,” according to Dan Versace, research analyst, ESG Business Services at research firm International Data Corp.”

It reminds me of Isabelle Bousquette’s article in The Wall Street Journal titled CIOs Confront Sustainability Mandates, which details the pressure applied to monitor and improve IT energy usage. It states: “Sustainability is increasingly becoming a board level issue with broad companywide mandates flowing down from chief executives to tech leaders, said Gartner Inc. analyst Stephen White. The IT consulting and research firm estimates that by 2025, 50% of CIOs will have specific performance metrics tied to energy consumption—forcing tech leaders to prepare now.”

Any successful sustainability initiative must start with the monitoring of energy consumption because if you can’t monitor it, you can’t manage it, which means you can’t reduce it.

DCIM 3.0 asserted sustainability would emerge as a CIO priority

None of the reports on pressure building to track sustainability efforts and energy consumption come as a surprise to the Schneider Electric EcoStruxure IT team.

A year-and-a-half ago, our team introduced DCIM 3.0, which identifies three waves of the software evolution: DCIM 1.0 in the 1980s with small UPSs on PC servers that drove the need for software to manage them; DCIM 2.0 in the 2000s when PC servers became rack mounted and started moving into data centers, which created new planning challenges for space, power, and cooling capacity; and DCIM 3.0 in the 2020s when the pandemic highlighted the mission critical nature of IT infrastructure everywhere – not just classical data centers.

DCIM 3.0 made four chief assertions: the hybrid IT environment was here to stay; resiliency challenges will remain a top priority; cybersecurity concerns will drive the need for better management tools; and sustainability will emerge as a priority for CIOs.

Start measuring power consumption with EcoStruxure IT

Media coverage and conversations with customers are proof points that pressure is mounting on CIOs to meet sustainability reporting challenges. And that is where EcoStruxure IT becomes an essential tool. Start measuring power consumption today so you can display progress, identify issues, and improve. All of our DCIM solutions measure the power consumption of your IT. For example, EcoStruxure IT Expert has measurements on power and history for changes, e-conversion recommendation, and battery wear model. EcoStruxure IT Advisor and Data Center Expert are our on-prem solutions with DCE measuring power consumption and temperature history for changes. IT Advisor has an energy efficiency module and more.

We are excited about the journey to improve sustainability metrics and reporting and will have lots more to share. Be sure to check out White Paper 100: 3 Steps to Calculate Total Enterprise IT Energy Consumption Using DCIM and stay tuned!

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