[Customer Testimonial] Microsoft Technology Center

With APC Solution, Microsoft Technology Centers Ready for Anything

“With it, we can more effectively manage power and cooling based on application loads, and can implement increasingly sustainable IT practices.” 

Michael Valletta 
Technical Director 
Microsoft Technology Center 
New York, NY 

“Microsoft Technology Centers (MTCs) provide everything customers need to envision, plan, build, deploy, operate, and optimize a secure, customized solution based on Microsoft and partner technologies.  State-of-the-art development suites, architecture design labs, an Envisioning Center, and a fully loaded data center create a focused environment in which to prove out Microsoft and partner solutions. We drive enterprise revenue and are responsible for executing major customer and partner campaigns. Downtime must be avoided not only to enable partners to complete their testing, but based on our revenue impact, it costs MTC roughly $300/minute.

“Proving out multiple and ever-changing solutions requires an extremely dynamic data center. We reconfigure hardware and software for every customer Proof of Concept, and support unique partner and customer setups every week. We needed flexible power and cooling capacities within the racks and centralized management.

“We chose an APC by Schneider Electric solution because of their flexibility and our longstanding partnership. The solution’s centralized management and a holistic view of the data center were the driving factors behind integrating StruxureWare Data Center Expert and the StruxureWare Data Center Operation Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM). This is the first management pack for SCOM to link physical infrastructure and server environments.

“The StruxureWare Data Center Operation Management Pack allows us to see the state of applications, OS, servers, storage, and physical infrastructure in one screen. Now we can more effectively manage power and cooling based on application loads, and can implement increasingly sustainable IT practices.

“It resolved our immediate issue by allowing us to change the amount of power available in a given rack to respond to changing power density requirements, to track power usage trends, and to better plan for new hardware location.

“In addition, as an 8-5 shop, the ability to see the status of power and cooling and the remote monitoring to notify us of any issues off-hours are big benefits. Over time, we also expect to see increased efficiency in the data center, lower costs for power and cooling, and a smaller carbon footprint.

“Since we are a 100 percent Microsoft shop, having APC remain a partner is important because it gives us the flexibility to respond to changing customer needs and drive customer solutions.”