How Your Smartphone Can Monitor Your Data Center and Your Black Friday Bargains this Thanksgiving
The holiday period traditionally brings with it some winners and some losers. Last year for example, the holiday retail sales battle was arguably lost by physical stores. According to a report on the website Practical Ecommerce, over Thanksgiving 2015 bricks and mortar sales fell by 10 percent to $10.4 billion from 2014’s $11.6 billion.
At the same time, online sales experienced double digit growth as consumers avoided the queues at retail outlets and used technology to hunt down bargains. Adobe Digital Index reported shoppers spent $1.75 billion on Thanksgiving with an average order value of $162. A further $2.74 billion was spent via the internet on Black Friday. Incredibly, and for the first time, the bulk of online purchases were made using mobile, smartphones and tablets.
That online shopping has firmly cemented its place as a key source of revenue is nicely illustrated by sales on Alibaba last Singles Day (11th November) in China. According to Forbes, Alibaba earned $14.3 billion in gross merchandise volume on Single’s Day 2015. In fact, turnover last year broke several world records for one-day sales, said state-run news channel China Daily.
The availability of the internet machinery which enables these online sales binges is critical to success. For those working in data center facilities, there is a heightened stress to ensure the uptime of ecommerce websites as well as bandwidth to make sure that consumers can buy, buy, buy all they want without interruption, hesitation or concern for lost transactions. But it’s not just the data centers serving retail content that need to be online during the holiday.
Trends like digitization, globalization and remote working mean that even at times when the whole of the US appears to be at play, data center professionals are busy ensuring the availability of data center infrastructure for no-break services. However, there is some light on the horizon. With the recent announcement of StruxureOn™, Schneider Electric believes that their new cloud-based digital service offering could help data center managers to relax and join in with the holiday fun.
Based on IoT technology, StruxureOn™ connects professionals to data center physical infrastructure assets via a mobile phone app. So, it’s not just shoppers who get to benefit from smartphone technology in the holiday season. With real-time visibility into system performance, maintenance and service requirements, StruxureOn ensures maximum protection of your critical equipment through smart alarming, remote troubleshooting and data-driven insights.
All of this means that if you work in a data center, you just need to keep your mobile device handy, and in between checking out bargains, you can get visibility of the physical infrastructure with live data directly to your smartphone. So you can sit back and enjoy the holiday without fear of having to run out during your Thanksgiving dinner to go check things physically. To learn more about digital remote monitoring from Data Center Science Center white paper #237 “Digital Remote Monitoring and How it Changes Data Center Operations and Maintenance,” or visit www.schneider-electric.com/struxurueon.
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