Analytics is a comparatively new term to be entering the collective parlance of businesses, but this practice is also rapidly showing itself to be every bit as powerful as it is new. With analytics technology, businesses have the necessary practices and operations to not only gather data, but also analyze that data and make conclusions about how their businesses should respond from there. Server Technology (News - Alert), meanwhile, is working to make analytics even better by adding some new hardware to the mix.
A combination of statistics, operations research and computer programming, analytics depends on each of these in equal measure, so Server Technology brought out its newest version of the Sentry Power Manager specifically with the principles of analytics in mind. The new Sentry Power Manager application allows users to gather data about cabinet power, things like zones, temperature and a look at the system overall, to allow administrators to spot trends in terms of usage and make decisions according to that new information.
Analytics have been successfully employed in a variety of fields, from sales and market research to cash flow accounting and beyond. Seeing them applied to server management and issues related to data center power supplies, therefore, is only a small surprise. Yet the underlying idea behind the concept, that data centers produce their own data which can in turn be used to perform better management functions of same, is an idea that makes perfect sense. Knowing when temperatures in the room are unusually high can signal a good time to have more users take a lunch break to reduce load on the network. Maybe power consumption rates can be spread out more to take advantage of off-peak billing. There are plenty of potential applications, limited only to the data on hand and the sheer imagination of those applying the data to real-world situations.
“Our data center power customers will be able to use the predictive trending analysis to view and analyze past and future data related to all aspects of cabinet power – total system, circuits, lines, locations, zones and temperature,” said Calvin Nicholson, Server Technology’s director of Software and Firmware, in a company blog post. “Customers can overlay trend types and will immediately see a 'red alert' if future trends cross currently set thresholds for power or environmental conditions. “
Server Technology joining in the analytics fray just proves that the sheer power of analytics is here to stay. Those who will not learn from history may be doomed to repeat it, but those who do are likely to save some money, especially where analytics are involved.
Edited by Rachel Ramsey