10 Most Innovative Data Center Companies To Watch
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Data infrastructure is expanding at a rapid rate with no end in sight for cloud
operators. Additionally, enterprise customers’ demand for data center space,
power, and cooling is also rising.
The result was a need for innovative software companies to support the
complexities associated with managing the proliferation of data center
infrastructure equipment. The next big trend is the digitization of data center
operations.
Enter Sunbird Software with a focus on real user scenarios for real customer
problems, Sunbird helps data center operators manage tasks and processes
faster and more efficiently than ever before, while saving costs and improving
availability.
Innovative software companies like Sunbird are rapidly evolving solutions to
support the complexities associated with managing data center infrastructure
equipment proliferation.
Sunbird Software President Herman Chan said, “The next big trend is the
digitization of data center operations. The traditional IT CMDB is extending
into the Data Center CMDB, unlocking additional productivity and efficiency
that is obtained from the integration of tools and operational teams,
providing a holistic view of the entire IT stack from applications to compute,
network, storage, and the underlying space, power, and cooling
infrastructure that supports these services.”
Talking about the trends, Herman Chan said that while the biggest trend is the
digitization of data center operations, data center professionals are under
increased pressure to comply with corporate sustainability initiatives and
intelligently reduce energy costs.
There is also a renewed focus on increasing capacity utilization efficiency to get
the most out of existing resources and defer costly new buildouts. Finally, the
debate over cloud vs. colo vs. hybrid is heating up as organizations weigh the pros
and cons associated with “cost, security, flexibility, and scalability”.
“Sunbird Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) enables data center
professionals to centrally track and manage all their resources, across their entire
estate, in a single pane of glass. With our tool, organizations can make smarter
data center management decisions to better achieve their sustainability,
productivity, efficiency, and cost-containment goals,” said Herman Chan.
The most common challenge is that high-density workloads disrupt their ability to
utilize the capacity they are paying for fully. The decision-makers have available
space but cannot use it to deploy new equipment and roll out new services
because only a few power-hungry devices can go in these high-density cabinets.
Any additional devices would generate more heat in the cabinet than traditional
cooling methods can accommodate.
“Sunbird DCIM addresses these challenges by simplifying high-density rack
management and enabling customers to intelligently increase their density without
risking downtime. Users can identify and proactively remediate hot spots, set
thresholds and alerts on power and environmental conditions before a serious
problem, automate power capacity planning to eliminate stranded capacity, and
get at-a-glance views of the health and capacity of all sites.,” said Herman Chan.
Elaborating on the statement – A Leader in Second-Generation DCIM for Remote
Data Center Management – Herman Chan said that first-generation DCIM
software vendors marketed their products as a panacea to all data center
problems. Still, their overhyped tools did not deliver as promised. When Sunbird
was formed, the team asked data center professionals why their legacy DCIM
software failed them. The Sunbird team kept hearing the same: they were difficult
to use, slow to deploy, lacked integration, and had incomplete functionality.
“We wanted to solve these real customer problems with a new class of DCIM
software that dramatically simplifies remote data center management. The key
pillars of second-generation DCIM include automation via integration, zero-
configuration analytics, ease of use, AI and machine learning, and completeness
of capabilities including asset, capacity, change, energy, power, environment,
security, and connectivity management, along with 3D visualization, and built-in
Business Intelligence & analytics,” said Herman Chan.
“Our customers tell us that second-generation DCIM provides a serious Return-
On-Investment in the form of increased productivity, efficiency, and uptime,” added
Herman Chan.
Citing some case studies, Herman Chan said that Data center professionals often
struggle with the complexity of accurately planning capacity. The traditional
approach to power budgeting is to derate the server nameplate value to around
60% to 70%. This process is manual, estimated, and largely inaccurate and
wastes space and money.
“Sunbird’s patent-pending Auto Power Budget machine learning algorithm takes
the guesswork out of capacity planning by automatically calculating a highly
accurate power budget number for each make and model instance of a server
based upon the actual measured load of that device in your environment running
your applications.
“Leading customers are getting incredible value from Auto Power Budget.
Comcast uses this feature to get 40% more usage out of their facilities and power
resources, and eBay can deploy projects with 33% fewer cabinets, saving them
$120,000 in just a single project,” said Herman Chan.
Talking about what sets Sunbird apart from its competitors, Herman Chan said
that the company has an extreme focus on delighting customers. Their experts
listen intently to and understand the customers’ problem statements and use
cases and feed that information to the product development teams. The customer
input on our product roadmap allows us to create a superior and more complete
solution.
“Our vast collection of customer testimonials and case studies, near 100%
customer satisfaction rating from support reviews, and our customers’
strong willingness to become public references all confirm that, together
with our customers, we are changing the way data centers are managed with
elegant software that’s easy, fast, and complete,” said Herman Chan.
The future is bright for Sunbird. It is surprising that to this day, many enterprise
customers who run data centers with hundreds and sometimes thousands of
cabinets of equipment could still be using Excel, Visio, and home-grown
databases to track and manage their data center infrastructure assets. Sunbird will
continue investing in its proven enterprise-class platform, adding automation and
AI enhancements to the product, expanding its team globally, and becoming a
leading global DCIM provider with the highest customer satisfaction ratings.
Data centers are not going away anytime soon. The world depends on them in all
aspects of daily life. The problem statement is pervasive, and the opportunity for
us to help is significant. CIOs are challenged with disparate tools and siloed teams
that often don’t talk to each other resulting in reduced productivity of the entire IT
management stack.
Integrating data center operations and facilities management systems into the
overall IT stack for a more holistic view of all relationships and dependencies of
siloed tools and teams. The data center CMDB needs to be shared with the IT
CMDB and vice versa.
Only then can you have seamless flow-through operations and fully understand
your cost per application as you can drill down into the relationships and
dependencies that support those applications. Integration and data-sharing across
systems is the key to unlocking new productivity levels, efficiency, and cost
containment.
