CA's Data Center, IT Management Adds Eaton's Power Management

Could small to mid-sized datacenters become an emerging target management customer for MSPs? A new partnership between IT management technology provider CA Technologies (NASDAQ:CA) and power management specialist Eaton, offers MSPs a way to differentiate as they approach this growing market. Here are the details.

First, some background. The new partnership between the two companies integrates Eaton’s power management hardware and software with CA Technologies Data Center Infrastructure Management technology (DCIM), giving data center managers a solution combo that the companies say can increase operational efficiency, mitigate risk and enhance performance.

The companies are currently piloting the solution for MSPs with two partners, including Carousel Industries, a large technology services provider. But the potential partners market is even higher.  Eaton and CA told MSP mentor that a major factor in the new partnership was the significant overlap in partners between the two companies.  This set of customers will be the focus of the partnership’s initial go-to-market strategy.

As far as end customer companies are concerned, CA told MSPmentor that the target customer for this service offering includes SMB and mid-market data centers with less than 100 IT equipment racks.

Here’s the value proposition, according to CA and Eaton: “As these data centers become more energy-intensive, DCIM and power management are becoming pressing issues.  Companies are now responsible for managing power, cooling, and physical space requirements to make better use of existing capacity. They also have to manage these assets in the face of flat or reduced budgets. By consuming DCIM through a service provider, they will receive a higher level of expertise at a reduced cost and an increased rate of productivity.”

For instance, the integration will let MSPs use CA DCIM to collect, analyze and report on metrics such as temperature, humidity, power by phase, current by phase and power factor.  In addition, customers can use CA DCIM to create intelligent alerts based on the data collected to gain insight into environmental and power issues that could threaten IT infrastructures. Accurate calculations of total PDU power usage for Eaton equipment or other device groups is also delivered via CA DCIM.

The companies told MSPmentor that they are developing marketing collateral for mutual partners, and will  host training sessions and webinars throughout the year to provide partners with the appropriate resources to demonstrate the value of the solution to customers.

MSPs can consume this joint offering in a number of ways. This solution can be offered on premise, hosted by the MSP or hosted by CA Technologies, the companies said.