Scale Computing and APC by Schneider Electric Launch ‘Micro Data Center in a Box’

September 18, 2018 Off By David
Written by David Marshall

Scale Computing has partnered with APC by Schneider Electric to deliver a Micro Data Center in a Box solution.

By utilizing Schneider Electric’s award-winning Micro Data Center portfolio of infrastructure solutions, the Micro Data Center in a Box is able to deliver a fast, cost effective and resilient solution for channel partners, MSPs and end users while meeting the distinct challenges of big data and IoT faced by many businesses today.

The joint platform is built on a highly simplified but extremely effective and adaptable infrastructure. Micro Data Center in a Box offers a range of shared automated virtualization, compute, storage and power management resources. Under the terms of the agreement, Scale Computing supplies its HC3 HyperCore software while APC delivers a self-contained and secure enclosure. This solution allows organizations to simply and efficiently deliver a complete and highly energy efficient IT solution that is pre-tested, optimized and able to be rapidly deployed. This allows for a reliable and robust environment to leverage the best of on-premise and multi-cloud infrastructures.

The Micro Data Center in a Box requires minimal IT expertise and no additional infrastructure software. Instead, it is a highly available, self-managing platform for running applications at the edge. The added pay as you grow flexibility enables organizations to start small and grow their IT as and when needed. In addition, it has built-in redundancy to provide business continuity, even in remote edge locations. The solution is pre-packaged and ships ready to be deployed, providing a quick, turn-key and simple IT infrastructure, optimized to immediately support edge computing needs.

Organizations from numerous vertical sectors are realizing the huge benefits of embedding compute and storage capacity to the edge, closer to where the data is being generated. Retailers, utility companies, hospitals, universities and logistics businesses are among the many seeing the result of addressing the demand for highly distributed capacity in this way. According to 451 Research, Micro Data Centers on the edge of the network are growing in popularity with a compound annual growth rate of 42% over the last three years.

Jeff Ready, CEO of Scale Computing, commented: "One of the biggest challenges faced by businesses today is how to simplify edge IT environments, where resources and staffing are often quite different. Deploying our Micro Data Center in a Box gives organizations the flexibility to quickly scale capacity and computing power at the edge, while eliminating the complexity of managing separate hypervisors, backup software, and disaster recovery software. This fully integrated solution saves time, money and resources, which will be a game changer for these edge and remote environments, and for those channel partners and MSPs who serve them across the world."

Scale Computing customer, Benchmark Electronics, is looking to deploy Scale Computing and APC Micro Data Center in a Box solutions across its distributed enterprise. Stacy Black, corporate director of global IT infrastructure and operations at Benchmark Electronics said: "The cost-effective solution will greatly simplify physical infrastructure deployment in our edge environments. The plug and play devices are easy for staff at any location, regardless of their technical capabilities, to get up and running quickly without having to know how to install, deploy and maintain the infrastructure. The Micro Data Center in a Box will also ensure uniform configuration and installation across company’s edge locations."

John Knorr, VP, global IT channel alliance from Schneider Electric, concluded: "Our joint Micro Data Center in a Box solution is a great example of the capabilities and technologies we are able to deliver customers in edge environments. When we partner with organizations like Scale Computing, combining our Micro Data Center solutions with Scale’s HC3 HyperCore software, we deliver on our mission to provide our customers "Certainty in a Connected World."

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About the Author

David Marshall is an industry recognized virtualization and cloud computing expert, a ten time recipient of the VMware vExpert distinction, and has been heavily involved in the industry for the past 20 years.  To help solve industry challenges, he co-founded and helped start several successful virtualization software companies such as ProTier, Surgient, Hyper9 and Vertiscale. He also spent a few years transforming desktop virtualization while at Virtual Bridges.

David is also a co-author of two very popular server virtualization books: "Advanced Server Virtualization: VMware and Microsoft Platforms in the Virtual Data Center" and "VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center" and the Technical Editor on Wiley’s "Virtualization for Dummies" and "VMware VI3 for Dummies" books.  David also authored countless articles for a number of well known technical magazines, including: InfoWorld, Virtual-Strategy and TechTarget.  In 2004, he founded the oldest independent virtualization and cloud computing news site, VMblog.com, which he still operates today.

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