Industrial-equipment manufacturer Eaton Corp. announced new data center IT equipment enclosures earlier this week.

Eaton is a diversified manufacturer, selling into many different markets, and its new E Series enclosures give it more ammunition to capture revenue from one of the fastest-growing markets: data centers. The company’s data center product portfolio consists primarily of power distribution, management and backup products.

Michael Malia, senior product line manager for Eaton’s electrical sector in the Asia Pacific, said applications of E Series enclosures were not limited to fully fledged data centers.

“Our new E Series enclosure supports these strategies whether it be for a network closet, computer room or data center environment,” he said, referring to data center operators’ reliability strategies.

The enclosures are vendor neutral and guaranteed to accommodate any TIA/EIA 310-D standard equipment. They are ideal for small and medium-size data centers, Eaton said.

The enclosure exceeds air-flow requirements of major IT equipment, allowing for 71% air flow. It features quick-release field-reversible doors and two-piece lockable side panels for easy access to the interior.

Vertical 19-inch mounting rails are adjustable in 6.35mm increments. A 42U cabinet with castors fits through standard doorway.

Eaton’s cabinet products are playing in a busy market, populated with both IT vendors and dedicated rack-and-cabinet companies. Competitors include HP, Emerson Network Power, Rittal and Panduit among many others.

Recently Facebook announced it was developing a new data center rack standard through its Open Compute Project, an online collaboration platform for open-source data center hardware and infrastructure design. Called Open Rack, the project’s primary goals are to simplify installation of hardware in the data center and to improve air flow.

The Open Rack will also feature cable-less power distribution.