Forget the big storage boxes, the powerful servers, the cooling fans, and the power distribution. Your best way in to the data center business may be the smallest way in...through tiny hardware that fits in the palm of your hand.
"The conversation has changed," Richard Jenkins, VP Marketing & Strategic Partnerships at RF Code tells us. "No one buys technology-- they buy outcomes."
RF Code has been rapidly growing. With $20 million in annual revenue last year, it has become a powerhouse in asset tracking, slapping RFIDs on all the kit in the data center to provide the precise, accurate and actionable information about the location, status and state of physical assets. As regulatory demands on companies of all sizes around power management and sustainability increase, it’s certainly a valuable service.
Through channel partners, RF Code sells Active RFIDs (433 MHz) which allow real-time data capture and data flow in any environment via not only the active RFID hardware (asset tags, sensors, readers) but also via management software (built on open standards).
Recently RF Code introduced its next generation of technology for the growing data center industry: the M174 active RFID asset tag, designed for rack-mounted assets. The M174 is about 40% smaller than their current IT asset tag, but still contains all the functionality of the larger tags including a 5-year battery life and the same read range.
Active RFID tags continuously emit data whereas passive RFID tags must be manually scanned. With the average square footage of data centers between 10,000 and 25,000 ft2, manual asset tracking is no longer a viable option. Active RFID tags are able to transmit signal up to 300 feet, compared to passive tags which boast a read range of 20-40 ft.
How important is asset tracking? IBM recently presented some of their ROI results at the 2013 Uptime Institute Symposium. They now have over 99.7% visibility of their data center assets from a starting point of 71.8%, enjoy 100% audit compliance savings on any manual inventory collection, reduced asset location time by 94% and improved asset reconciliation time of lost assets by 80%.
But today the data center owners and managers, amid the growing footprint of European data centers, value something far more than even asset tracking.
"We changed our marketing and our selling more than 180 degrees. We used to sell to lower-level data center decision-makers, but now lower level management is recommending to senior levels and our sales strategy has evolved so now we sell to the CIOs, SVPs, and VPs.
If asset management didn't get the high level attention in the data center, what is it now that attracts the personal attention of C-level executives?
"Eighteen months ago it was all about asset management," says Jenkins. "We have seen a dramatic swing to Environmental Monitoring (power, temperature, humidity, air pressure)."
"It's the fastest route into the data center; we have a 96% success rate with pilot trials. Customers usually spend $6000 on a pilot and seven figures soon after that trial," notes the RF Code VP.
Energy, green, sustainability...these are the top trinity of data center concerns today. Environmental and energy monitoring now push sensors and the Internet-of-Things (IoT) into office automation as well as into data centers.
As an example, Jenkins mentions a London bank who agreed to do a pilot and took a box of sensors for $6000 . Those sensors determined their venue had 10 degrees of temperature difference from one end to another. And indicated so many other energy saving situations that the bank wants to use sensors throughout all offices for an anticipated savings of £400,000 a year .
"We are not the solution, just the data part of seeing the solution," notes Jenkins.
Yet without the data, the solution remains as invisible as the problems they would address.
Go RF Code
