Swedish telecommunications giant Ericsson has entered a strategic partnership with Swiss power and automation expert ABB.

Under the terms of the deal, ABB’s Decathlon Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software will be integrated with Ericsson Cloud System – an infrastructure stack aimed mainly at network operators.

“We selected ABB as our partner because Decathlon for Data Centers is the only DCIM solution available today that can provide holistic, real-time visibility and control from service processor to power grid, as well as enable the dynamic automation of data center physical resources,” explained Anders Lindblad, head of Cloud and IP Business Unit at Ericsson.

Automate like a pro

ABB is one of the largest engineering companies in the world, well-known for its industrial robots and expansive power grid projects.

Its Decathlon software enables data center administrators to manage their compute, storage and network resources, power consumption and cooling intensity from a single interface. But the selling point of Decathlon is its advanced automation features which were built using company’s expertise in this field.

“As the data center market matures, owners and operators are starting to demand the same control and automation capabilities common to other complex, mission-critical environments,” said Peter Terwiesch, president of Process Automation at ABB.

“Our alliance with Ericsson extends the automation of physical, mechanical and electrical infrastructure right to the heart of IT workload management.”

The announcement was made at Mobile World Congress – the most important mobile event of the year. At the same time, Ericsson announced Hyperscale Datacenter System 8000 – part of the Cloud System and the first ever appliance to be based on Intel’s Rack Scale Architecture.