Schneider Electric ups the ante on sustainability strategy

Schneider Electric has released three independent research studies to better understand the maturity of sustainability initiatives within IT and data centre organisations, and more specifically, where the IT and data centre industry stand in achieving this vision of net-zero IT operations.

To complete the studies, 451 Research, Forrester and Canalys independently collected data from more than 3,000 global participants, including the largest colocation and cloud providers, IT solution providers and IT professionals across many segments and organisation sizes.

Overall, the findings consistently demonstrate that across the data centre and IT industry, there is discrepancy between where companies think they are and implementing full lifecycle sustainability programs across their IT infrastructure.

According to the 451 Research findings, in surveying 1,100 IT professionals responsible for core and distributed IT, whereas 26% of participants self-identified as having a full lifecycle sustainability program covering all the infrastructure, only 14% are taking the actions to have implemented the programs.

The analysis further identifies 22% as not addressing sustainability as a major focus, though may have efficiency initiatives to improve specific areas of operations.

Schneider Electric executive vice president, secure power division Pankaj Sharma says, "Data centres play a critical role in driving Electricity 4.0 which we believe is the key to changing the trajectory of climate change. As an industry, we have a responsibility to drive forward our environmental commitments with extreme urgency.

"We've made some progress but to avoid a major energy challenge, all data centres - including distributed edge data centres - must be more sustainable, efficient, adaptive, and resilient."

Sharma continues, "The research is clear - the industry knows sustainability needs to be prioritised but challenges still exist to taking action and will take a collaborative effort to overcome. The good news is the technology to take action in sustainability exists today. Now is the time to act."

In addition to releasing these research studies, Schneider Electric made several new announcements, all of which are designed to help data centre and IT professionals make progress towards their sustainability goals.

Building on the company's channel history, Schneider Electric's updated IT Partner Program helps partners to grow and differentiate their business for the long-term.

The new evolution of its partner program is designed to support IT channel partners with a simplified program structure and diverse specialisations for key sectors including data centres, IT solutions, software, and services with a new range of sales tools, training and enablement resources.

Further, it includes new benefits aligned with each of its specialisation paths and offers a clear sustainability strategy for partners via Schneider Electric Green Premium solutions, which offer sustainable performance and circularity by design.

Partners can become strategic advisors and experts in their market across multiple IT competencies by enabling the development of diverse business models, simplifying and increasing transparency for requirements and benefits and strengthening channel-centric practice.

Schneider Electric has also released its APC Smart-UPS Modular Ultra, the first modular UPS with lithium-ion technology in the industry.

The highly modular, scalable and redundant design combined with up to 2.5x power density allows is designed to enable enhanced power protection, new levels of resiliency, lower total cost of ownership, and longer life, enabling customers to scale or adjust as the business grows or the needs change.

The circularity in the UPS design combined with lithium-ion technology position makes it small, light and powerful, the company states. The sustainable and scalable UPS will be Green Premium Certified.

Additionally, the company announced the expansion of its EcoStruxure IT DCIM software. This update evolves data centre infrastructure management software from individual data centres to cover full, hybrid IT environment and addresses industry requirements for more resilient, secure, and sustainable IT infrastructure.

EcoStruxure IT features a custom solutions team comprised of skilled engineers who speak 24 languages and perform customer integrations everywhere in the world, the company states.