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As anyone who follows Alistair Pim’s blog posts is well aware, Schneider Electric is a big believer in the power of partnerships and alliances. That was certainly evident at the recent Xperience Efficiency event in Washington, D.C., where a number of Schneider partners were on hand showing their solutions in the Marketplace area.
One of them was HP and I caught up with Mike Fallos, who is US Service Line Leader for Critical Facilities Services in HP’s Data Center Consulting group. Schneider Electric is part of the HP AllianceOne Partner Program, through which the two companies work together to promote and integrate Schneider Electric energy efficient data center solutions, including UPS and cooling systems.
HP and Schneider Electric have been working together for more than a decade, integrating joint solutions at the field level. But the data center partnership is newer, having started about 18 months ago, Fallos says.
“Schneider Electric helps us go to market quicker and utilize their expertise, and to build a solution without redesigning it from the start over and over,” he says.
Indeed, that’s what partnerships are all about: two (or more) vendors integrating their solutions ahead of time, so the customer doesn’t have to. “It just makes sense to go to market that way,” he says.
Customers also get another benefit. “There’s one owner, one prime [contractor],” Fallos says. “The situation will determine [whether it’s HP or Schneider Electric]. But it’s one point of contact to move products in a speedy, timely fashion.” And the two companies have representatives in strategic spots around the globe, all focused on joint data center sales.
Going forward, Fallos expects the partnership to get even stronger as each company delivers new products, such as the HP Moonshot software-defined Web server and data center infrastructure management (DCIM) offerings from Schneider.
Check out the video to hear what Fallos had to say.
