Schneider Electric, a leader of Digital Transformation in energy management and automation, has unveiled with Cisco a new Edge Computing solution, integrating Cisco’s HyperFlex Edge, hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) within Schneider Electric’s industry-first 6U Wall Mount EcoStruxure Micro Data Center. The solution brings resilient, secure and localised computing capabilities closer to where the data is created, processed and stored. HyperFlex is a complete, engineered HCI solution built on the Cisco UCS platform, enabling customers to extend the power and simplicity of HCI from data centres to critical IT systems at the edge of the network.
EcoStruxure ready and fully compatible with Schneider Electric’s award-winning next-generation Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software EcoStruxure IT, the next evolution in the Cisco HyperFlex product set meets the Edge Computing challenges of connectivity, speed of deployment and space constraints, with simplified installation across remote and distributed locations, including retail, manufacturing, automotive and telco environments.
Edge Computing presents customers with a number of new challenges including greater numbers of distributed systems deployed in environments not optimised for IT, which are often unstaffed, placing new physical and cybersecurity demands on the solution. With live demonstrations at Cisco Live, Barcelona, 2020, the system will showcase new physical and cybersecurity features, including a high-performance image recognition application and the recent Device Security Vulnerability Assessment now available in EcoStruxure IT Expert.
Continued innovation for Edge Computing applications
“Cisco and Schneider Electric have been Alliance Partners for more than 15 years,” said Rob McKernan, Senior Vice President, Secure Power Europe. “As part of that collaboration, we continue to innovate and build on the integration capabilities between our companies. This helps partners to deliver best-in-class, pre-integrated systems, safe in the knowledge that the solution will work predictably, as planned from the minute it is operational. At the edge, reliability is essential and with interoperability between EcoStruxure and Cisco Intersight, partners can manage multiple Edge sites on behalf of their customers, while generating new service revenues.”
Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Micro Data Center meets customer demands for manufacturers, suppliers and systems integrators to provide standardised, pre-tested and pre-integrated IT systems that reduce time to market and building complexity for IT professionals. With greater interoperability between the IT and physical infrastructure, customers can specify their system utilising components from different vendors with the reassurance it will work predictably as planned from the moment it is deployed.
Schneider Electric’s 6U Wall Mount is designed for Edge Computing environments where space is at a premium and reliability is a must. It allows large, heavy Edge servers, networking equipment and UPS to be safely mounted on a wall. Consuming zero floor space, it is 60% less intrusive than traditional wall mount enclosures. Cisco certified shock packaging also enables channel partners and systems integrators to pre-install IT for quick and standardised deployments, with secure, ruggedised options, perfect for light industrial environments.
