Panduit – which has come at Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) from the network - will use its purchase of Unite Technologies to increase its power monitoring capabilities and also plans to push the technology out wider to the estate, covering all areas of the business.

Speaking with FOCUS at Panduit’s Global Systems Integrators Congress in Cannes, France, this week, Panduit SVP of Global Marketing Andrew Caveney said Panduit expects to release an integrated offering with Unite in the fourth quarter of this year, and plans to make an announcement around estate-wide management early 2013.

“It’s early but our sales teams are already engaged and working together and we will be talking about our joint solution soon,” Caveney said.

Unite Technologies will be operating as Unite Technologies by Panduit. It is Panduit’s first ever acquisition in the 55-year history of the company.

“Typically we like to grow from within, and have a deep understanding of the technology before we introduce something to the marketplace. We have built our R&D organization organically,” Caveney said.

“But with the DCIM market, everything has change very quickly. There’s a lot of niche sotftware providers out there and we realized that Unite came at DCIM from a different perspective – the power perspective, where as we are more connectivity. We saw a very good synergy.”

From data centers to the estate

Unite Technologies has already signed a number of contracts for estate-wide management – which means essentially monitoring activities in different elements of the enterprise, from work stations to industrial machines.

Caveney said Panduit has carried out similar projects, working with Rockwell Automation, for example, which connected its data center to the factory floor with Ethernet networks.

“There are opportunities here for infrastructure management as well, because just as important as uptime is in the data centr it is also important in the industrial space because if a production line goes down an organization will stop functioning,” Caveney said.

“The challenge with this, however, is finding the right decision maker in the network that has responsibility for both the facilities and the applications.”

Panduit Director of Global Data Center Solution Development Jeff Paliga said he believes the data center only holds a fraction of the real potential that could be seen with infrastructure management.

“Data center energy use is probably less than 20% of what is being used in the enterprise,” Paliga said.

“In the past we have focused on the data center because it has been such a headline grabber, but building wise there is a lot of square footage of enterprise space that also needs this.”

FOCUS will have more details about Panduit’s plans following its acquisition of Unite Technologies in our print edition, out in October. To sign up for your digital edition, click here.