Physical Infrastructure Management Feature Editorial

As companies become further challenged with managing greater volumes of data and improving security, managing data center risk and increasing operational efficiency most certainly top the priority list.

 

Tinley Park, Ill.-based Panduit Corp., a global leader in unified physical infrastructure (UPI) solutions, recently announced the integration of its physical infrastructure manager (PIM) system into EMC Ionix for “increased visibility and control of physical infrastructure assets to improve operational efficiency and minimize data center risk,” company officials said.

 

“Panduit operates at the forefront of the data center transformation by working together with partners like EMC (News - Alert) and our customers to establish a reliable, dynamic infrastructure that make it easy to adopt and deploy new technologies,” said Vineeth Ram, Panduit’s vice president of global marketing. “This latest achievement allows Panduit and EMC to provide data center solutions that help customers minimize risk to their physical infrastructure through simplified troubleshooting and more comprehensive asset tracking, resulting in greater business agility and operational efficiency.”

 

According to EMC, the Ionix architecture reflects “a more flexible approach to solution integration and automation than has been available in more traditional models.”

 

Panduit’s UPI-based solutions leverage a so-called intelligent physical infrastructure as the foundation to enable convergence across communication, computing, control, power and security systems, according to Ram. These end-to-end solutions ultimately drive operational and financial advantages across the enterprise, allowing businesses to improve reliability, reduce costs, heighten agility and support sustainability initiative.

 

According to Ram, Panduit and EMC are working together to develop solutions that help customers manage risk within the physical infrastructure by “intelligently converging physical and logical systems.” The partnership, he said, creates flexible UPI-based solutions for the data center physical layer that enable monitoring, managing and automation of network tasks through intelligent asset identification and tracking.

“Panduit’s Physical Infrastructure Manager Software Platform monitors and tracks IP-enabled devices throughout the enterprise to enable IT managers to perform efficient capacity planning, manage remote devices, enforce regulatory compliance and increase the reliability and security of network infrastructure operations,” added Ram. 

Panduit’s PIM software platform provides EMC Ionix real-time information on the status of connectivity within the network cabling infrastructure and reports all of the PanView iQ Hardware System (intelligent patch panels) connectivity changes to EMC Ionix, and, as company officials explained, together they assist the network administrator with troubleshooting and documentation of the physical network infrastructure − to respond faster to configuration changes, assimilate usage and cabling connectivity data more quickly and save costs associated with network connectivity problems.