Unscheduled Downtime: How Intelligent Edge Computing Platforms Can Minimize Business Interruptions

Opens a new window

Edge computingOpens a new window is a key enabler for fueling new-age customer experiences and business growth across diverse locations and geographies. These ‘outposts’ (the edge deployments) have the finger and pulse on the company’s customer base. But the backbone that ensures efficient, uninterrupted operations for these geographically distributed IT environments is the edge-level hardware — IT installations such as uninterruptible power supplyOpens a new window systems (UPSs) and power distribution units (PDUs) or cooling units. These may not be the typical ‘big heroes’ in your physical infrastructure ecosystem compared to servers and storage appliances but are equally critical to network uptime and business operations efficiency. In fact, the UPSs and PDUs also safeguard critical IT infrastructure such as servers and the networking equipment from vulnerable electrical failures, minimizing the risk of data loss and unplanned downtime. But when not managed efficiently, faulty equipment can cause outages and power down business-critical systems and networks, leading to data and revenue loss and negative customer experiences. For example, in busy retail outlets, an outage can knock point-of-sale (POS) systems offline, bringing business to a standstill. More often than not, on-site workers would lack the technical expertise to troubleshoot the problem. And companies that lack in-house technicians rely on IT vendors to bring the system back up, which increases operating costs. Amid remote working environments, achieving uptime or near-continuous uptime of dispersed critical infrastructure across multiple locations is difficult, and system outages are unfortunately too frequent and costly. Even the most well-run operations are prone to IT systems failure, impacting several business processes and services. It’s a fair bet that during the pandemic-hit 2020, your organization, too, may have had to contend with equipment malfunction due to aging UPSs, shifts in load levels or temperature thresholds. Avoiding unplanned downtime remains a top technical and business challenge, and it’s only getting more complex. On the one hand, business continuity is increasingly hinged on connectivity and uptime of IT assets across distributed networks. Uptime Institute’s 10th annual Global Data Center SurveyOpens a new window found that “power problems continue to be the largest single cause of major outages.”^[1] On the other, IT managers tasked with ensuring connectivity and fault tolerance across distributed sites know, the edge computing equipment footprint is only set to grow, with the global edge computing marketOpens a new window set to reach 18.36 billion by 2027, as this data from Fior Markets suggests.^[2] The risk of negative business impact, combined with the growing edge-computing ecosystem, is exactly why IT leadership should urgently seek to build a resilient physical IT infrastructure. This involves proactively monitoring equipment reliability, preventing potential device failure, improving operational efficiency, and extending the agility and robustness of cloud solutions across distributed edge deployments. As IT engineers adapt to the new hybrid workforce model and organizations shrink IT staff, a cloud-based, interoperable remote service management platformOpens a new window that enables remote management and on-site support for quick remediation is key to managing disruptions that can otherwise become more common and debilitating, even as distributed IT environments expand.

From the Break-Fix Model to Predictive Maintenance: Shifting Gears is a Strategic Decision

Traditionally, critical IT infrastructure hasn’t often been deemed sexy enough to merit investment when the going is good. However, the ‘once-in-a-generation’ pandemic has really kicked things into high gear, offering IT leadership a strategic opportunity to move away from the break-fix model to an intelligent, connected process that delivers end-to-end visibility of all physical infrastructure across disparate locations. And future-thinking leadership is taking notice. GartnerOpens a new window research predicts that IoT-enabled predictive maintenance spend will reach $12.9 billion in 2022, up from 3.4 billion in 2018.^[3]

Building Resilience and Intelligence Into the Edge

Amid today’s highly virtualized environments, the best approach to increase hardware-centric resilience, maintain a stable IT environment, and reduce device footprint is through data and intelligence-centric operations. With the uptick of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, there’s more energy and infrastructure data generated than ever before. And while the market is crowded with remote monitoring and management (RMM) solutions, these legacy systems lack the machine learning chops to process the data at the scale of hybrid ecosystems. Leading energy and automation solution providers like Schneider ElectricOpens a new window offer cloud-based, vendor-agnostic solutions such as EcoStruxure IT ExpertOpens a new window — the industry’s first cloud-based data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solution that help end-users and IT providers efficiently deal with edge network management complexities. Backed by the most advanced machine learning (ML) technology, solutions such as EcoStruxure IT Expert effectively allow teams to recognize which connected devices need attention, so there are fewer network disruptions during the service process. Intelligent systems can also actively detect behavior patterns, proactively identifying devices with worn parts that need replacement. Advanced monitoring and dispatch servicesOpens a new window can identify potential system failures before they become critical, by dispatching technicians with the right tools and parts to make a fix the next business day. This phenomenally reduces servicing turnaround times. Such intelligent cloud-based systems can truly create a hands-off approach to hybrid, distributed infrastructure management, and help save operating expenses, maintain data integrity and develop agile operations through real-time visibility. The increased efficiencies also drive down metrics such as the ‘mean time to respond’ (MTTR) and rationalize the IT equipment footprint by streamlining purchase, replacement and maintenance across locations, even at scale

Take Remote Monitoring To the Next Level With the Right Partner

IT decision-makers — the choice is yours — hamstringing long-term growth with a series of band-aids or making a significant leap forward with the right technology partner who understands the unique demands of your industry. Though many vendors provide remote monitoring applications to enable IT to view and monitor devices through a single console, they lack a full gamut of services ranging from logistics support, spare parts fulfillment, and on-site remediation the next business day. Even when offerings seem mature, robust, and cloud-based, always ask if your vendor has the expertise, next-gen technology, and deep third-party vendor relationships to reduce IT complexity, not add to it. The goal is to find a vendor partner that can keep pace with your growth and scale with an end-to-end solution, including on-site support, so you can focus on your core business even as you shrink IT staff.

Four Ways Schneider Electric Simplifies and Centralizes Hybrid IT Management

1. Improving visibility across multi-vendor ecosystemsOpens a new window : By offering a much deeper level of integration with multi-vendor device support for networked devices, Schneider Electric makes it easy for organizations to view, monitor and safeguard sensitive infrastructure in high availability environments. By integrating remote monitoring data with third-party solutions, the vendor-agnostic solution brings automation capabilities to the fore, enabling businesses to shrink costs via data-driven insights. 2. Ease of implementation and use: Besides 24×7 real-time monitoring, EcoStruxure IT Expert moves the needle from predictive maintenance to preemptive issue resolution before it snowballs into a crisis. Through machine-learning based insights, dedicated IT teams improve network stability and optimize device lifecycle, effectively reducing interruptions. 3. On-site IT support is the secret weapon: Before deploying a cloud-based remote monitoring solution, IT leaders should evaluate how the technology impacts business segments. This goes beyond returns in terms of hard dollars to the consultative facet of the service as well. On-site IT support for distributed infrastructure across various remote locations adds tremendous value. In an era of cloud-based services, field services are a value-add beyond the break-fix service calls. With the right data at hand, IT can schedule maintenance visits in advance to ensure the equipment is running at peak performance at all times. 4. Thriving global partner community: Channel partners play a crucial role in bringing the best-of-breed technologies that solve customers’ unique business and operational challenges. They are responsible for adopting IT solutions aligned with the business needs and helping organizations in their journey to scale. Through a global partner community, Schneider ElectricOpens a new window ensures your business never goes dark.

In Conclusion

As an experienced IT leader, you understand the chaotic pace of change and disruption facing businesses right now. Whether you’re running a micro data center, warehouse operations or supervising retail operations, you know that stability is key to achieving growth even as you weather the economic downturn. While watching operational costs is important, your choice of technology partner will play a huge role in managing projects efficiently and ensuring you can maintain optimal consumer experience (CX) at every touchpoint. While there is still no good tech stack that can simplify edge infrastructure management at a large scale, intelligent, cloud-based, vendor-agnostic, pay-as-you-go software offerings such as EcoStruxure IT Expert coupled with dispatch servicesOpens a new window makes this expansive and complex process entirely hands-off and repeatable. To learn more about how Schneider Electric can help you manage distributed edge deployments – visit this pageOpens a new window for more information.

^{Sources: 1 Uptime Institute 10th Annual Global Data CenterOpens a new window , July 2020 2 Edge Computing Market by Fior MarketOpens a new window , May 2020 3 Predictive Asset Maintenance with Edge Compute by CapgeminiOpens a new window , March 2020}