The IT Nerd

Seasonal changes mean colder temperatures, longer nights and less time spent outdoors. As the weather turns, Canadians spend more time inside, using electricity to cook, cozy up on the couch for movie nights and entertain friends and family.

To help manage electricity use, Schneider Electric has created Wiser Energy, an integrated monitoring system for residential homes. The internet-connected device tracks and monitors energy activity and use to provide real-time, easy-to-understand data so homeowners can make their homes greener and more efficient—all through a convenient mobile-app.

As the seasons change, Wiser Energy can help Canadians:

• Identify extra electricity consumption from having the oven and stove on more often while cooking and entertaining friends and family.
• Understand how much electricity is being used from having an electric fireplace or space heater to warm up a room.
• Leave for that fancy holiday party with peace of mind they remembered to turn off the hair straightener or clothing iron.

Wiser Energy easily connects to a residential electrical panel and Wi-Fi network. Over time, the system learns about a home to identify appliances and energy use patterns. Wiser Energy can help homeowners determine how they can change their habits to use energy smarter.

Product benefits include:

• Peace of mind: Canadians can keep tabs on home activity from anywhere with an easy to use mobile app, so they can know when the garage door is opened, when the clothes are dry, or whether the sump pump is running.
• Instant Alert Notification: Homeowners can be notified with instant, customizable alerts for appliances, so there’s no worrying whether the oven was left on or the curling iron was left plugged in.
• Save Money: Reduce electricity bills with live energy tracking and detailed views by appliance, leading to lower energy consumption.

Wiser Energy is powered by the Sense app, whose intelligent home energy technology interprets the power usage and activity of devices in the home. Wiser Energy is available online through Home Depot.

For more information, visit: https://www.se.com/ca/wiser-energy

Schneider Electric today announced findings from a new study that sheds light on how hyperscale and colocation trends are impacting the current dynamics and future model of the data center value chain.

As the demand for data center capacity continues to grow – CapEx spending from the top hyperscale operators totaled a record $120 billion in 2018, the role of the value chain — consulting engineers, construction managers, electrical contractors, and distributors/integrators — has never been more important, but the challenges they face continue to intensify.  Schneider Electric’s new report, The Impact of Hyperscale Data Centers: How the Wave is Changing the Value Chain, reveals how the individual value chain members’ roles have evolved, what their leading pain points are, and what they believe is needed to succeed in this new industry reality.

Adapting to Hyperscale

Overall, the report found that while new technology constructs such as open architectures, edge deployments, the software-defined data center (SDDC), prefab, and AI/digitization are having profound impacts on all members of the value chain, the majority of value chain respondents agree hyperscale presents the biggest positive impact to their businesses.

The increase on profit margins and opportunity to gain new skills and expertise were some of the most significant opportunities presented. However, hyperscale has also amplified the impact of the industry’s ongoing skilled labor shortage, which ranked as a top challenge and day-to-day pain point across the value chain.

The Modern-Day Value Chain

Members of the value chain agreed that increased collaboration – across roles as well as with end-users and manufacturers – and transparency are key to overcoming these challenges and supporting longer-term hyperscale success.

“Hyperscale has fundamentally transformed the data center market. Its scale and complexity have had a similarly profound impact on what we call the value chain, the ecosystem of people involved in bringing such immense capacity to life,” says Frank Nash, Senior Director, Secure Power, Schneider Electric. “What today’s report reveals is that the value chain is poised to take advantage of hyperscale’s potential and is evolving with the era, but persistent and new challenges are driving a modern approach to engagement and collaboration. Each member of the value chain plays a more significant role in the process to make it faster and more cost-effective than ever before.”

Key Takeaways

The insights revealed in Schneider Electric’s report, The Impact of Hyperscale Data Centers: How the Wave is Changing the Value Chain, serve as guidance to value chain members as they consider their roles over the next decade, as well as manufacturers and vendors when it comes to better understanding the people they work with.

“By creating a portrait of today’s value chain, we get to the heart of the shifts so we can better understand and cater to the unique needs of these critical industry players,” adds Nash.

Explore and interact with the findings by visiting our interactive infographic, a dynamic web experience that showcases topline results from this report. To access the complete report, The Impact of Hyperscale Data Centers: How the Wave is Changing the Value Chain, click here.

* The findings of this report are based on a survey which yielded responses from 204 North American hyperscale and colocation data center decision makers spanning engineering, construction management, distributor/integrator, electrical contractor roles.

Today marks Earth Overshoot Day, the day when human demand for food, fiber, timber, and carbon absorption exceeds the amount of biological resources the Earth can renew in one year. This year, Earth Overshoot Day is earlier than ever. This translates to humanity using roughly 1.75x the planet’s resources every year.

For the last 40 years, the planet has become increasingly inefficient, using more resources, creating more emissions, and increasing our carbon footprint. This trend can, however, be reversed – and doing so will be beneficial to businesses in the long run, as discussed in Schneider Electric’s new white paper “The business case for one-planet prosperity.”

One-planet prosperity is a simple compass to assess companies’ strategies against two essential questions: “Do I operate within one-planet constraints?” and “Do my offers help customers move out of ecological overshoot?”, as indicated in the white paper for C-level audiences. Companies whose business models increase human well-being while also increasing resource security are much more likely to be economically successful in the long run.

The white paper discusses the importance for global businesses to strive for one-planet compatibility, that is, pushing back Earth Overshoot Day to December 31^st or later, and using one planet’s worth of resources per year, or less.

You can view the white paper in its entirety here, which was developed in partnership with Global Footprint Network, the international sustainability organization that pioneered the Ecological Footprint.

The Farmer’s Almanac is forecasting a long and “very, very cold” winter in 2019, and for Canadian homeowners that means higher utility bills. There are several ways Canadians can prepare their homes this winter to stay warmer and use less energy, resulting in lower bills:

• When cooking or baking, use the oven light to peek at your creations, rather than opening the door. An oven loses about 20 per cent of its heat every time you open the door.
• Understand the energy-using culprits in your home. Install a residential energy monitoring solution like the new Wiser Energy System from Schneider Electric for real-time access to energy consumption data in your home through a smartphone app.
• Seal air leaks around your front door and windows with weather-stripping and caulking to prevent cold drafts.
• Open curtains and shades on sunny days so the sun can naturally warm your home. Then, close your window shades at night to help keep the warm air inside.
• Deck the halls with LED holiday lights. Use newer LED light bulb strands to decorate your home; they use less energy, last longer and present no fire hazard.
• Install a programmable thermostat to maintain your optimal temperature inside. You can lower your home temperature at night or when you’re out for several hours. Each degree you roll back your temperature can save up to two percent on your heating bill.

Schneider Electric, the global specialist in the digital transformation of energy management and automation, has announced the launch of the Schneider Electric Edge Contest to provide funding to help customers deploy or upgrade their edge IT infrastructure. This initiative is designed to enable customers who purchase select APC by Schneider Electric products to capitalize on the benefits of edge computing solutions to enhance customer experience, generate new revenue and decrease business costs. As 2018 is shaping up to be the tipping point for edge computing, businesses can now begin enhancing their Internet of Things (IoT)-critical on-premise infrastructure as part of their overall IT strategy.

2018 is the Year of the Edge

The trends around IoT are reshaping the technology ecosystem, with a more distributed business model adding significant emphasis and importance to factors like bandwidth, latency and physical security. As businesses become increasingly reliant on IoT and dependent on a distributed IT ecosystem, applications are migrating closer to the point of data consumption; requiring speed and capacity to meet customer demands in real time. As a result, edge environments are increasingly being utilized to process and analyze information to make companies’ most critical decisions. According to IDC, 45 per cent of data generated by IoT technologies will be processed close to or at the edge of the network by 2019.

As the leading brand in IT physical infrastructure and critical power management, Schneider Electric provides customers with the technology, management and services capabilities they need to successfully deploy and maintain edge IT infrastructure in a way that is consistent, manageable and secure. Schneider Electric’s integrated solutions enable customers to leverage dynamic, business-critical IoT platforms with the same level of availability, security, and management of their IT systems from the enterprise to the edge.

Seizing the edge opportunity now

To enable the growing trend of edge computing, Schneider Electric is offering a series of grants across multiple countries for businesses to strengthen and improve their edge infrastructure. Customers will have the option to invest in the IT infrastructure needed to seize the opportunity of edge technologies in the near term, whether they’re embarking on their first deployment or upgrading their existing footprint.

Through the contest, customers can buy and connect new Connected Smart-UPS™ with APC SmartConnect for a chance to win US$10,000 of IT equipment to bring data centre-like resiliency to their distributed environments. If a channel partner resells and helps connect the winning Connected Smart-UPS, that channel partner will also receive US$1,000 credit from APC by Schneider Electric.

For more information on Schneider Electric’s edge solutions, please contact your local APC representative or visit www.apc.com/edge.

Schneider Electric Canada has just launched Go Green in the City 2018, its global contest to find bold ideas and innovative solutions for smarter, more energy-efficient cities.

Now in its eighth year, Go Green in the City has become a major event for business and engineering students worldwide. In 2017, nearly 20,000 young innovators from 3,000 universities in 180 countries took part, of which 58 per cent were women. The stakes for Go Green in the City competitors are high, with mentoring, networking, travel, cash prizes, business and job opportunities all on the horizon.

Three new topics added in the competition to focus on digitization

In 2018, the competition is expected to attract more interest due to a wider range of topics. Students are invited to submit their bold ideas in one of five categories: sustainability and inclusivity, the digital economy, smart supply chain, cyber security, or “no boundaries/bold idea for going green.” “Sustainability and inclusivity” and “no boundaries” have been popular topics for many years, while the three newly added categories reflect a greater focus on digitization, along with a “sky’s the limit” approach to innovation.

Raja Jain and Nimisha Gupta from IIT Roorkee in India won first place in the 2017 Go Green in the City final for their “Evacool” air-cooling system. They stated: “Go Green in the City has been a dream come true! Winning the competition has given us such a great sense of achievement, as well as a rich learning experience. If you care about how technology can promote greener practices and sustainability, you will not get a better opportunity than this!”

An ever-increasing success

Teams must be composed of two students attending accredited business or engineering schools in the same country for the duration of the competition. Each team should include at least one female member, in line with Schneider Electric’s policy of promoting Diversity and Inclusion. The deadline for submissions is June 1^st, 2018.

All shortlisted teams will receive mentoring by Schneider Electric experts to produce viable business cases to present at one of seven regional semi-finals over the summer in Europe, North America, China, India, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, and South America. Each of the seven regional winners will then be invited to prepare for the competition final, along with one outstanding all-female team and two “wild-card” teams (additional teams selected from the semi-finalists).

After this second round of mentoring, ten teams will meet at the global final in the United States (city to be announced) in the autumn. The global winning team selected by the executive jury will be offered the chance to start a career at Schneider Electric after an international travel to visit any two company locations of their choice worldwide.

For more information, please visit: www.gogreeninthecity.com

Schneider Electric has won “The most efficient ship solution” Award at International Green Shipping & Maritime Technology Summit held November 28-29, 2017 in Athens, Greece.

The award-winning solution is a full EcoStruxure offer – Schneider Electric’s IoT-enabled digital architecture, organized around three core layers of technology: Connected Products, Edge Control, Analytics and Services, implemented in cruise ships and ferries.

The solution consists of:

• Connected Products: Connected breaker solution
• Edge Control: Power Monitoring Expert open software architecture integrated with a third-party SCADA energy management and automation system
• Apps, Analytics and Services: EcoStruxure Asset Advisor services that deliver predictive analytics to address issues inside electrical distribution equipment to mitigate the risk of electrical failure and optimize maintenance.

With more than 90 years of experience in the marine industry and a strong presence in major shipbuilding countries, for the naval, merchant marine and offshore markets, Schneider Electric offers a complete portfolio of energy management solutions, from electrical distribution, machinery protection and control, to vessel automation systems and electrical secured power, including shore power connection. Schneider Electric recently completed the implementation of shore power connection for the Holland America Cruise Ship Veendam at the new Alexandra Cruise Terminal in Old Montreal. The solution is estimated to eliminate upwards of 2,800 tonnes of greenhouse gases annually.

The International Green Shipping and Technology Summit hosted by Global Industrial Events Summit mainly covers shipping, shipbuilding, and green maritime technology topics to decrease pollution at sea and increase the efficiency of vessels as the EU2020 target. The Summit gathered 200 key marine experts and companies around the globe which have a big influence in the industry.

For more information on Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Platform and expert Marine solutions please visit the Marine and Shore Power web page.

Schneider Electric today announced that Susan Uthayakumar will become Country President, Canada on January 1, 2018, reporting to Annette Clayton, CEO and President, North America, and Chief Supply Chain Officer.

Susan, a 13-year veteran of Schneider Electric, was most recently Vice President, National Sales, Canada, responsible for developing and executing the sales strategy for the company’s electrical distribution and industrial automation products and solutions. Susan’s prior roles at Schneider Electric include Vice President, Partner Business, Canada; Chief Financial Officer, Canada; Vice President Controller, North America; and Director, Mergers and Acquisitions, North America. Before joining Schneider Electric, Susan advised companies on mergers and acquisitions and growth strategies.

Susan holds multiple degrees in finance from the University of Waterloo and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

In her role as Country President, Canada, Susan will be responsible for overseeing all strategic initiatives in the country and driving its revenue and growth. She will continue to play an integral part in elevating Schneider Electric’s presence in Canada as a leader in energy management and automation.

Juan Macias, whom Susan succeeds, will be leading Schneider Electric’s Prosumer in the New World of Energy initiative across the company.

Schneider Electric is holding its marquee Innovation Summit from September 25-26 in Hong Kong. At the Summit, Schneider experts and world-leading industry thinkers will collaborate on ways to turn bold ideas into solutions on Powering the Digital Economy.

Innovation Summit Hong Kong will feature the EcoStruxure World Premiere, unveiling the latest innovations in EcoStruxure, Schneider’s IoT-enabled, plug-and-play, open architecture, which delivers end-to-end solutions in six domains of expertise – Power, IT, Building, Machine, Plant and Grid ­– for four end markets, Building, Data Centre, Industry and Infrastructure. EcoStruxure World Premiere includes an exclusive first look at the launch of three new solutions:

• EcoStruxure IT, offering next-generation cloud-based Data Centre Infrastructure Management, providing visibility of real-time and predictive analytics, optimizing operations across IT and facilities
• EcoStruxure Building, features a collaborative smart building platform and an open system architecture allowing developers and partners to interact, share data and develop apps, increasing efficiency up to 30 per cent and ensuring optimal comfort for occupants
• EcoStruxure Industrial Software platform, which combines scalability and domain expertise to enable people and processes to work seamlessly together, enabling lowest total cost of ownership without compromising risk, data security, or performance requirements

Over 1,000 Schneider customers from across the globe will hear from more than 50 expert speakers, including Jean-Pascal Tricoire, Chairman and CEO, Schneider Electric and Cyril Perducat, Executive Vice President IoT & Digital Transformation, Schneider Electric. The event program will feature strategy talks and interactive deep-dive expert learning sessions with a diverse group of customers and partners, designed to further accelerate digital solutions. Attendees will also be able to visit the company’s Innovation Hub, a 1,000+ square meter showcase of the company’s rich portfolio of software, solutions and services. The Innovation Hub also features a Partner Village, which brings together its network of technology partners and start-ups, including Microsoft, Accenture, Cisco, Intel and Salesforce, showcasing their latest co-innovations.

With Innovation Summit Hong Kong, Schneider is also now expanding its COP21 sustainability commitments and its goal to become a carbon neutral company by 2030 into large events. Schneider is investing in a carbon offset project to compensate for all air travel and event construction related to the Summit. Sustainable event practices will be implemented throughout the event through managed climate control, focus on sustainable packaging and food and a reduced use of paper and waste. This sustainability commitment will be incorporated in all future editions of the Innovation Summit World Tour.

At this event, the company announced EcoStruxure IT, the first Data Centre Management as a Service architecture.

EcoStruxure IT revolutionizes DCIM by delivering a cloud-based architecture purpose-built for hybrid IT and data centre environments. The vendor-agnostic architecture delivers a new standard for proactive insights on critical assets that impact the health and availability of an IT environment with the ability to deliver actionable real-time recommendations to optimize infrastructure performance and mitigate risk.

Key benefits include:

• Global visibility across the hybrid ecosystem – from anywhere – with one tap access right from a smartphone
• Device information, smart alarms and monitoring through open system collecting data from all devices regardless of vendor
• Foresight into potential risks by leveraging global benchmarks and analytics in the EcoStruxure data lake
• Ease of deployment through a convenient subscription model for any size environment
• 24/7 remote monitoring with the Schneider Electric Service Bureau. In the event of an incident, the Service Bureau helps troubleshoot and ultimately reduces mean time to repair

EcoStruxure IT is the latest addition to Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure, its IoT-enabled, plug-and-play, open architecture, which delivers end-to-end solutions in six domains of expertise – Power, IT, Building, Machine, Plant and Grid – for four end markets, Building, Data Centre, Industry and Infrastructure. EcoStruxure is driving digital transformation for Schneider Electric clients globally, enabling them to be competitive in today’s digital economy.

Rolling out to select geographies over the remainder of 2017 and into 2018, highlights of EcoStruxure IT include:

• EcoStruxure IT Expert – Expert delivers visibility across the hybrid environment from anywhere with one tap access direct from any computer or smart phone with the Mobile Insights application. Data centre and IT managers can benchmark performance against their own system or those across the industry for trend analysis, maintenance or failure prediction, efficiency comparisons and other measures.
• EcoStruxure IT Advisor – Advisor addresses the need for greater system optimization and inventory management for enterprise and colocation users. This enables superior control, planning and prediction across all site locations – on and off premises. Failing equipment can be located and addressed easily, reducing time to repair, and can be supported by Schneider Electric’s 24/7 remote monitoring Service Bureau.

As a part of EcoStruxure IT, Schneider Electric continues to offer StruxureWare for Data Centers, a self-contained on-premises monitoring and operations management solution, suitable for data centre and IT deployments of all size and scale. Additionally, Schneider Electric offers a simplified process and tool for StruxureWare customers interested in migrating to the new EcoStruxure IT architecture.

As part of the launch, EcoStruxure IT was piloted in the U.S., benchmarking IT environments with more than 500 customers, 1,000 data centres, 60,000 devices and 2 million sensors. Customer feedback on the results of their EcoStruxure IT implementations affirm the growing need for a cloud-based data centre management solution.

More information on the capabilities and availability of EcoStruxure IT can be found here.

Finally, the company announced a new Global Family Leave policy that is industry-leading in its global scope and strengthens the company’s commitment to Diversity and Inclusion.

The policy will support Schneider Electric employees worldwide by providing paid personal time during moments when it matters the most, enabling them to better manage their unique life and work.

The policy features the following provisions as the global minimum paid leave standards:

• • 12 weeks for the primary parent (both natural birth and adoption)
  • Two weeks for the secondary parent (both natural birth and adoption)
  • One week for care for an immediate family member that either needs elder care or care for a serious health condition
  • One week of bereavement leave for a death of an immediate family member

In formulating the policy, Schneider Electric has actively chosen to define “leave” and “family” in an inclusive way, recognizing that definition of family, life and work are changing every day. By design, the policy includes key life stages for welcoming a new baby, taking care of sick or elderly family members, and mourning the loss of a family member. It also assumes an inclusive definition of family by extending an equal amount of parental leave to a parent by natural birth or adoption. Resources will be provided to Schneider Electric countries to ensure understanding and support of the new policy by managers and employees.

The policy will be deployed gradually, with 40+ countries including the U.S., Mexico, China and India, implementing by January 2018, and 100 per cent global deployment by January 2019. If a country’s legal requirement or current practice is more than the minimum standards, the higher standards will be followed. Eligibility within a country may vary based on local laws as well as current eligibility for the Schneider Electric benefits.