Smart Carbon Control sets out to make datacenter data meaningful

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1 Smart Carbon Control sets out to make datacenter data meaningful Analyst: Andy Lawrence 31 Mar, 2015 The small UK company Smart Carbon Control (SCC) has spent several years working on its integration and management platform for datacenters, I 2 M, which pulls together and presents information from various different systems, both inside and outside the datacenter. Following a detailed company makeover in recent years, its investment and expertise is beginning to pay off, with a big deal signed and others in the pipeline. SCC is little known in the datacenter management software market, but it has just has secured a five-year contract to provide data integration products and services to a large European datacenter operator. The agreement means that SCC is extending a long-standing relationship with the company. SCC provides DCIM (datacenter infrastructure management) like functions, but, it stresses, its I 2 M systems is not a DCIM system per se. It uses the marketing phrase 'Don't compromise information management' to stress its difference. The 451 Take SCC is one of the older companies in the datacenter management software market, but its tools and its approach are clearly not on the trailing edge. Its focus is not on the underlying sensing, metering or control systems, but on how to gather data together from multiple sources, and show it in a useful, meaningful way. Using Web services and presentation tools for portals and mobiles, and helped by experts in how to present information, its tools have immediate management appeal. Its graphical representation of datacenter operational information is one of the most useful that we have seen. 451 Research has identified the importance of such tools to datacenter operators, who will ultimately need to link DCIM tools to other management systems and present data to decision makers. For SCC as a business, Copyright The 451 Group 1

2 things are not quite so clear: it is clearly very technically competent, but its positioning and market focus are still a work in progress. It is part product, part services, and the lines between these can be a little unclear. It seems to have so many capabilities that customers like analysts may have trouble seeing the difference between what it can do out of the box, and what it could do if commissioned. This isn't so unusual for IT giants, but could hold SCC back as it seeks to scale as a software product company. Context SCC is a small UK company set up as long as ago as As the World Wide Web emerged, it started to specialize in Web-enabled visibility of 'unusual' bits of data, often from 'reluctant' systems that were not designed to share. It started out working in agricultural and later industrial applications. The company saved significant amounts of energy for clients by exposing problems and waste at its customers. In 2001, the company changed direction, with the arrival of investor and chairman Steve Meeks, a former investment banker, along with sales director David Myers, who brought with him datacenter expertise and contacts. SCC became a primary software partner for a large European datacenter company soon after, helping it to solve a variety of data collection and reporting problems. This has since accounted for a large portion of its revenue. SCC has just signed a new five-year agreement, but its strategy is to dilute this with increased product sales from other operators. The company is now focused on energy and datacenter management, but it is positioned somewhat differently from other suppliers, including DCIM providers, in that its primary strength is in integration, and getting data from what it describes as 'reluctant systems,' combining this data with information from other operational and management systems. For this reason, 451 Research might categorize the company as more of a DCSO (datacenter services optimization) company than a DCIM company. Its core product is I 2 M, a suite of tools that enable integration of various data sources, from diverse underlying systems, and for this data to be integrated to produce reports and analytical information. As an example of its capability and unique approach, SCC has been working with UK based energy management 'guru' Vilnis Vesma to produce a simple meaningful metric of the energy efficiency of the datacenter. This takes into account IT workload and weather as well as datacenter Copyright The 451 Group 2

3 infrastructure and cooling efficiency. This data presents a single graphical view of datacenter efficiency over time something that the industry standard PUE metric cannot do. SCC employs 16 people at two locations in Letchworth, near London, and near Birmingham, in the Midlands, UK. A third site is under consideration. SCC is owned by private investors, including angel investor Rob Reid, and chairman Meeks; the company has also borrowed from Finance East, which backs UK innovative companies. Revenues are in the $1m-3m range for its 2015 financial year, 451 Research estimates. SCC's tools can be used by any company with an infrastructure (such as industrial buildings or telcos), and especially those with high energy use that would benefit from monitoring and performance management, but its near-term strategy is primarily to focus on datacenters. SCC is not currently looking for finance, and is primarily focused on the UK and European markets. However, it will consider ways of expanding into the US and elsewhere. At present, it has a few large customers, but says it hopes to close some significant new deals in the datacenter sector in the coming months. Technology SCC's primary software system is I 2 M, a software suite that based on Microsoft's SQL database management system, and written in C#, which is suited for distributed, service-oriented environments. The software has a service-oriented architecture (seen commonly in enterprise applications but less common in the datacenter and in industrial applications), making communication with multiple disparate systems easier. SCC says it has spent over 20 years working on interfaces and protocols to extract data from various systems. SCC has designed its suite to have a two-tiered database structure: an underlying database collects and holds all the underlying operational data, providing good performance and scalability; applications that run on top then have their own databases for management, reporting and analytics. On top of the databases and core integration 'bus,' I 2 M consists of a number of application modules. Most of these modules are, in a sense, 'native' DCSO applications meaning that they will quite likely use external data from other systems, whether they are applications in their own right or simply data sources (in other words, they don't use only operational infrastructure data from inside the datacenter). Copyright The 451 Group 3

4 The applications that SCC can offer includes the key Energy Analysis module, which provides the simplified datacenter efficiency view described above; a Facility module for monitoring, alarming and alerting; a Circuit module, for collecting and analyzing loads of PDUs (power distribution units); a utility module that collects and presents utility meter data across multiple locations; a Capacity module showing present and future use of space, power and cooling; an asset module for tracking physical assets, their location, attributes and history. Various other modules are available or can be developed. Competition As 451 Research noted when we introduced our DCSO (datacenter service optimization) in early 2014, convergence and the need for integrated, end-to-end systems is making it difficult for buyers and suppliers to easily see where one system ends and another begins, and who is competing with whom. SCC is a small company that at present is focused on its core customers and the UK market, so it probably won't make big waves unless or until it is acquired or develops an aggressive growth and partnership strategy. Nevertheless, its approach does represent an alternative or complementary one to that offered by more tightly integrated and highly functional DCIM suites from Schneider, Emerson, Nlyte, Panduit, CA Technologies and others. Nor does it have the range of functions of 'operational' systems such as FNT or Siemen's Clarity. With its focus on information management, reporting and analytics, SCC may be compared more with the UK company TDB Fusion, which has a similar approach based on service-oriented integration. While TDB, which is more focused on process and bidirectional workflow, and clearly positions itself as a complement to and enabling tool for DCIM, SCC is more likely to carry out the DCIM functions, although it can also work with other DCIM systems. SWOT Analysis Strengths Weaknesses SCC is small, agile and does not carry onerous responsibilities to large external investors. It is very good at integration and data presentation, a growing area of focus. It has a few large and loyal clients. SCC is small and UK focused, which will make long-term growth challenging. Its business model is part services, part product, which can engender strong relationships but could slow growth. Opportunities Threats Copyright The 451 Group 4

5 The datacenter software is in transition toward open, integrated architectures, and SCC may be considered a pioneer in this area. As the IT, facilities and datacenter software markets converge, at least in the use of technology, smaller players such as SCC may be squeezed by existing players and new entrants that develop their own capabilities. Copyright The 451 Group 5

6 Reproduced by permission of The 451 Group; This report was originally published within 451 Research's Market Insight Service. For additional information on 451 Research or to apply for trial access, go to: Copyright The 451 Group 6