Schneider Electric used its Innovation Summit in Hong Kong as the venue to roll out a series of EcoStruxure Platforms. EcoStruxure is an IoT-enabled architecture, which delivers solutions in six domains: Power, IT, Building, Machine, Plant and Grid; for four end markets: Building, Data Center, Industry and Infrastructure. EcoStruxure is helping to drive digital transformation for Schneider Electric clients globally.
EcoStruxure Industrial Software Platform
Schneider Electric announced its EcoStruxure Industrial Software Platform, an integrated, modular software suite designed to help address operational and business applications in the industrial and infrastructure markets. EcoStruxure Industrial Software Platform offers solution capabilities for engineering, planning and operations, asset performance, and control and information management. Designed to work with a Schneider Electric software portfolio installed base of 2 million+ software licenses deployed at 100,000+ sites worldwide, processing 10+ trillion daily transactions spanning 20+ billion operating parameters, the Industrial Software Platform is capable of operating at any scale necessary to help support complex and mission critical industrial operations.
The EcoStruxure Industrial Software Platform is designed to be hardware and systems agnostic and can be deployed in a scaled, modular fashion. This helps to enable companies to upgrade their technology footprint to support digital transformation at their own pace, supported by a large industrial software ecosystem. The Industrial Software Platform offers a range of commercial options (Subscription, SaaS, Perpetual) and deployment options (on-premise, cloud-based). The domain-specific functionality of the Industrial Software Platform is designed to help enable engineering, operations, asset management and people. The information management, business process knowledge and decision support capabilities are provided via platform modules specific to industry problems, which allow companies to help upgrade competencies, retain operational experience and develop the next generation workforce.
EcoStruxure IT
Schneider Electric also announced EcoStruxure IT, utilizing Data Center Management as a Service architecture to bring big data and IoT to data centers. EcoStruxure IT helps DCIM by delivering a cloud-based architecture purpose-built for hybrid IT and data center environments. The vendor-agnostic architecture helps to deliver proactive insights on assets that impact the health and availability of an IT environment with the ability to deliver actionable real-time recommendations to better optimize infrastructure performance and mitigate risk. Schneider Electric defines key benefits of EcoStruxure IT as offering global visibility by providing device information, smart alarms and monitoring through open systems collecting data from devices regardless of vendor; providing foresight into potential risks by leveraging global benchmarks and analytics in the EcoStruxure data lake; providing deployment through a subscription model; and providing 24/7 remote monitoring with the Schneider Electric Service Bureau. In the event of an incident, the Service Bureau helps to troubleshoot, which can reduce mean time to repair.
Highlights of EcoStruxure IT include EcoStruxure IT Expert, which delivers visibility across a hybrid environment from multiple locations with one tap access from a computer or smart device with the Mobile Insights application. Data center and IT managers can benchmark performance against their own system or those across the industry for trend analysis, maintenance or failure prediction, and efficiency comparisons.
Also included is the EcoStruxure IT Advisor, which helps to address the need for greater system optimization and inventory management for enterprise and colocation users. This helps to enable control, planning and prediction across site locations both on and off premises. Failing equipment can be located and addressed, helping to reduce time to repair, and can be supported by Schneider Electric’s 24/7 remote monitoring Service Bureau. As part of the launch, EcoStruxure IT was piloted in the U.S., benchmarking IT environments with 500+ customers, 1,000 data centers, 60,000 devices and 2 million sensors.
As a part of EcoStruxure IT, Schneider Electric continues to offer StruxureWare for Data Centers, a self-contained on-premises monitoring and operations management solution, suitable for data center and IT deployments of various sizes and scales. Additionally, Schneider Electric offers a process and tool for StruxureWare customers interested in migrating to the new EcoStruxure IT architecture.
EcoStruxure Building
Schneider Electric also announced the introduction of EcoStruxure Building, an open, collaborative IoT platform for smart buildings. EcoStruxure Building is specifically designed to address applications for building owners, real estate developers, system integrators, facility managers and building occupants. By 2020, nearly 30 percent of devices within buildings are estimated to be connected to the internet, helping to provide opportunities for efficiency gains. As a solution that combines building management software with hardware, EcoStruxure Building helps enable users to gain insights from building data to help make building environments smarter, more secure and comfortable, and reportedly up to 30 percent more efficient. By connecting the ecosystem ranging from sensors to services, this solution helps to integrate building systems, such as energy, HVAC, lighting, fire safety, security and workplace management, to best leverage IoT technology.
EcoStruxure Building is designed with options to deploy on the cloud and/or on premise, and the ability to scale from medium to large, multi-site building enterprises. Additionally, EcoStruxure Building is designed for cybersecurity and supports industry standard and IP-based open protocols to help facilitate the secure exchange of data and analytics between buildings systems from both Schneider Electric and third-party providers.
EcoStruxure Building is designed to help improve overall cost of ownership with access to analytics and reporting through a smart building portfolio of offers that includes:
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EcoStruxure Building Operation: building management software that integrates system and application data to help building operations to better monitor, manage and optimize
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EcoStruxure Building Operation – Energy Expert: building management energy module that tracks power consumption, allocates billing costs, and helps to conserves energy
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EcoStruxure Security Expert: security solution that helps to create secure business environments that better unify access control and intrusion detection
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EcoStruxure Fire Expert: fire solution that provides access to fire system data in the cloud
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EcoStruxure Building Advisor: continuously monitors building performance, helping to diagnose issues and provide actionable intelligence to better improve occupant comfort while reportedly lowering energy and maintenance costs up to 30 percent
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EcoStruxure Workplace Advisor: helping to optimize facility usage by better understanding space utilization and making data-driven decisions that can further maximize real estate values and improve employee experiences
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EcoStruxure Apps Studio: application development platform for the creation of more secure mobile applications that help to ensure greater comfort by providing occupants with access and control of room temperature, lighting, and blind controls