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The colocation market is poised to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 12.9 percent from 2020 to 2027. This steady growth requires colocation providers to balance resources and budget to determine scaling capacity while ensuring ongoing availability. An effective power monitoring and management approach is integral to addressing this growth while maintaining all-important uptime and reliability. It can ensure the health and efficiency of electrical systems, and prevent overloads, equipment damage, or downtime due to power disturbances.
But how do colocation providers keep up with emerging trends such as digitization while making key decisions to future-proof their power management systems? This post, as well as an upcoming webinar on effective power monitoring for colocation facilities, will tackle these important questions.
Market trends further increase the need for effective power management
Several key technology and business trends have emerged and they are deepening the impact power management can have on colocation providers.
The first is digitization. The risk of grid instability and power disruptions is increasing due to more severe storms, aging infrastructure, increasingly complex electrical distribution systems, and a more distributed energy network. In order to respond to these increased risks, there’s an urgent need for more IoT-enabled sensors, electrical meters, smart breakers, and other intelligent equipment to monitor conditions.
The second is connectivity. Power management systems need to connect all these digitized systems and integrate with other facility systems to provide a holistic view of everything impacting power and energy performance within the facility.
Finally, the rise of cyberattacks means power management systems need to be secure. If these systems go down or there is a lack of visibility, it opens the risk of a cyberattack as well as a potential loss of data. A solid power management system should be part of a cybersecurity strategy.
What colocation providers should look for when choosing a power management system
As technology and applications evolve, so should the power management system supporting these applications. Colocation providers should ensure their system is adaptable, with an architecture flexible enough to accommodate new applications, integrate new device types, and interoperate with new systems.
IoT applications have shifted the specifications for power management systems as well. As a result, these systems should be compatible with all kinds of wired, wireless, and IoT-enabled communication networks, and be scalable to allow for thousands of connected devices.
Power management systems must be able to turn data into actionable insights that help colocation facility teams respond to potential risks. As energy sources evolve, these systems should also be designed to work with complex energy distributions systems, which can include renewable and backup energy sources, energy storage and electric vehicle charging stations. Learn more about how colocation facilities can better leverage renewables in this recent post on building a climate-positive data center.
Colocation providers should also leverage systems that are purpose-built for power management, with data visualization tools designed for electrical system monitoring and power quality analysis. Ideally, a solution should provide built-in report templates, address key applications, integrate new device types, and interoperate with new systems.
Attend webinar on power management for colocation providers
For a deeper dive on power management for colocation providers, plan to attend our Innovation Talk Webinar: Effective Power Monitoring and Control Systems for Colocation Facilities on Thursday, Dec. 3 at 11 a.m. ET. I look forward to hosting the webinar and featured speakers will be Tony Hunt, Offer Manager, Digital Power at Schneider Electric, and Rich Alexander, Offer Creation Manager, Digital Power at Schneider Electric.
The webinar will outline the challenges data center operators face with power management and will cover key characteristics of an optimized power management system. It will also cover the need for simplification of solutions, analysis tools to diagnose power quality issues, how to support multi-vendor hardware as well as emerging trends in power digitization.
Ready to register? Submit your contact information here to join the call, Effective Power Monitoring and Control Systems for Colocation Facilities.
