A discussion on how intelligent data center designs and components are delivering what amounts to data centers-as-a-service to SMBs, enterprises, and public sector agencies.

1. Page 1 of 12
The Evolution of Data Center
Infrastructure Has Now Ushered in
The Era of Data Center-as-a-Service
A discussion on how intelligent data center designs and components are delivering what amounts
to data centers-as-a-service to SMBs, enterprises, and public sector agencies.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Vertiv.
Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to the next edition of the BriefingsDirect podcast
series. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and
moderator for this ongoing discussion on the latest insights into data center strategies.
There has never been a better time to build an efficient, protected, powerful, contained,
and modular data center -- yet many enterprises and public sector agencies cling to
aging, vulnerable, and chaotic legacy IT infrastructure.
Stay with us now as we examine how automation, self-healing, and increasingly
intelligent data center designs and components are delivering what amounts to data
centers-as-a-service.
Here to help us learn more about a modern data center
strategy that extends to the computing edge -- and
beyond -- is Steve Lalla, Executive Vice President of
Global Services at Vertiv. Welcome, Steve.
Steve Lalla: Thank you, Dana.
Gardner: Steve, when we look at the evolution of data
center infrastructure, monitoring, and management
software and services, they have come a long way.
What’s driving the need for change now? What’s making
new technology more pressing and needed than ever?
Lalla: There are a number of trends taking place. The
first is the products we are building and the capabilities of those products. They are
getting smarter. They are getting more enabled. Moore’s Law continues. What we are
able to do with our individual products is improving as we progress as an industry.
The other piece that’s very interesting is it’s not only how the individual products are
improving, but how we connect those products together. The connective tissue of the
ecosystem and how those products increasingly operate as a subsystem is helping us
deliver differentiated capabilities and differentiated performance.
Lalla

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Interconnectivity increases across ecosystems
So, data center infrastructure products are becoming smarter and they are becoming
more interconnected.
The second piece that’s incredibly important is broader network connectivity -- whether
it’s wide area connectivity or local area connectivity. Over time, all of these products
need to be more connected, both inside and outside of the ecosystem. That connectivity
is going to enable new services and new capabilities that don’t exist today. Connectivity
is a second important element.
Third, data is exploding. As these products
get smarter, work more holistically together,
and are more connected, they provide
manufacturers and customers more access to
data. That data allows us to move from a
break/fix type of environment into a predictive
environment. It’s going to allow us to offer
more just-in-time and proactive service
versus reactive and timed-based services.
And when we look at the ecosystems themselves, we know that over time these
centralized data centers -- whether they be enterprise data centers, colocation data
centers, or cloud data centers -- are going to be more edge-based and module-based
data centers.
And as that occurs, all the things we talked about -- smarter products, more connectivity,
data and data enablement -- are going to be more important as those modular data
centers become increasingly populated in a distributed way. To manage them, to service
them, is going to be increasingly difficult and more important.
And one final cultural piece is happening. A lot of the folks who interact with these
products and services will face what I call knowledge thinning. The highly trained
professionals -- especially on the power side of our ecosystem -- that talent is reaching
retirement age and there is a high demand for their skills. As data center growth
continues to be robust, that knowledge thinning needs to be offset with what I talked
about earlier.
So there are a lot of really interesting trends under way right now that impact the industry
and are things that we at Vertiv are looking to respond to.
Gardner: Steve, these things when they come together form, in my thinking, a whole
greater than the sum of the parts. When you put this together -- the intelligence,
efficiency, more automation, the culture of skills -- how does that lead to the notion of
data center-as-a-service?
Data is exploding. As these
products get smarter, work more
holistically together, and are
more connected, they provide
manufacturers and customers
more access to data.

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Lalla: As with all things, Dana, one size does not fit all. I’m always cautious about
generalizing because our customer base is so diverse. But there is no question that in
areas where customers would like us to be operating their products and their equipment
instead of doing it themselves, data center-as-a-service reduces the challenges with
knowledge thinning and reduces the issue of optimizing products. We have our eyes on
all those products on their behalf.
And so, through the connectivity of the product data and the data lakes we are building,
we are better at predicting what should be done. Increasingly, our customers can partner
with us to deliver a better performing data center.
Gardner: It seems quite compelling. Modernizing data centers means a lot of return on
investment (ROI), of doing more with less, and becoming more predictive about
understanding requirements and then fulfilling them.
Why are people still stuck? What holds organizations back? I know it will vary from site
to site, but why the inertia? Why don’t people run to improve their data centers seeing as
they are so integral to every business?
Adoption takes time
Lalla: Well, these are big, complex pieces
of equipment. They are not the kind of
equipment that every year you decide to
change. One of the key factors that affects
the rate at which connectivity, technology,
processing capability, and data liberation
capability gets adopted is predicated by
the speed at which customers are able to
change out the equipment that they
currently have in their data centers.
Now, I think that we, as a manufacturer, have a responsibility to do what we can to
improve those products over time and make new technology solutions backward
compatible. That can be through updating communication cards, building adjunct
solutions like we do with Liebert® ICOMTM-S and gateways, and figuring out how to take
equipment that is going to be there for 15 or 20 years and make it as productive and as
modern as you can, given that it’s going to be there for so long.
So number one, the duration of product in the environment is certainly one of the
headwinds, if you will.
Another is the concept of connectivity. And again, different customers have different
comfort levels with connectivity inside and outside of the firewall. Clearly the more
connected we can be with the equipment, the more we can update the equipment and
One of the key factors that affects
the rate at which connectivity,
technology, processing capability,
and data liberation capability gets
adopted is predicated by the speed
which customers are able to
change out the equipment that they
currently have in their data centers.

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assess its performance. Importantly, we can assess that performance against a big data
lake of other products operating in an ecosystem. So, I think connectivity, and having the
right solutions to provide for great connectivity, is important.
And there are cultural elements to our business in that, “Hey, if it works, why change it,
right?” If it’s performing the way you need it to perform and it’s delivering on the power
and cooling needs of the business, why make a change? Again, it’s our responsibility to
work with our customers to help them best understand that when new technology gets
added -- when new cards get added and when new assistants, l call them digital
assistants, get added -- that that technology will have a differential effect on the
business.
So I think there is a bit of reality that gets in the way of that sometimes.
Gardner: I suppose it’s imperative for organizations like Vertiv to help organizations
move over that hump to get to the higher-level solutions and overcome the obstacles
because there are significant payoffs. It also sets them up to be much more able to
adapt to the future when it comes to edge computing, which you mentioned, and also
being a data-driven organization.
How is Vertiv differentiating yourselves in the industry? How does combining services
and products amount to a solution approach that helps organizations modernize?
Three steps that make a difference
Lalla: I think we have a differentiated perspective on this. When we think about service,
and we think about technology and product, we don’t think about them as separate. We
think about them altogether. My responsibility is to combine those software and service
ecosystems into something more efficient that helps our customers have more uptime,
and it becomes more predictive versus break/fix to just-in-time-types of services.
And the way we do that is through three steps. Number one, we have to continue to
work closely with our product teams to ensure early in the product definition cycle which
products need to be interconnected into an as-a-service or a self-service ecosystem.
We spend quite a bit of time impacting the roadmaps
and putting requirements into the product teams so
that they have a better understanding of what, in fact,
we can do once data and information gets liberated.
A great strategy always starts with great product, and
that’s core to our solution.
The next step is a clear understanding that some of our customers want to service
equipment themselves. But many of our customers want us to do that for them, whether
it’s physically servicing equipment or monitoring and managing the equipment remotely,
such as with our LIFETM management solution.
A great strategy always
starts with great
product, and that’s core
to our solution.

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We are increasingly looking at that as a continuum. Where does self-service end, and
where do delivered services begin? In the past it’s been relatively different in what we do
-- from a self-service and delivered service perspective. But increasingly, you see those
being blended together because customers want a seamless handover. When they
discover something needs to be done, we at Vertiv can pick up from there and perform
that service.
So the connective tissue between self-service and Vertiv-delivered service is something
that we are increasing clarity on.
And then finally, we talked about this earlier, we are being very active at building a data
lake that comes from all the ecosystems I just talked about. We have billions of rows of
normalized data in our data lake to benefit our customers as we speak.
Gardner: Steve, when you service a data center at that solution-level through an
ecosystem of players, it reminds me of when IT organizations started to manage their
personal computers (PCs) remotely. They didn’t have to be on-site. You could bring the
best minds and the best solutions to bear on a problem regardless of where the problem
was -- and regardless of where the expertise was. Is that what we are seeing at the data
center level?
Build self-awareness, remotely and in person
Lalla: Let’s be super clear, to upgrade the software on an uninterruptible power supply
(UPS) is a lot harder than to upgrade software on a PC. But the analogy of
understanding what must be done in-person and what can be done remotely is a good
one. And you are correct. Over years and years of improvement in the IT ecosystems,
we went from a very much in-person type of experience, fixing PCs, to one where very
much like mobile phones, they are self-aware and self-healing.
This is why I talked about the connectivity
imperative earlier, because if they are not
connected then they are not aware. And if they are
not aware, they don’t know what they need to do.
And so connectivity is a super important trend. It
will allow us to do more things remotely versus
always having to do things in-person, which will
reduce the amount of interference we, as a provider of services, have on our customers.
It will allow them to have better uptime, better ongoing performance, and even over time
allow tuning of their equipment.
We are at the early stages of that journey. You could argue the mobile phone and the
PC guys are at the very late stages of their journey of automation. We are in the very
early stages of it, but the things we talked around earlier -- smarter products,
connectivity, and data -- all are important factors influencing that.
If [data centers] are not
connected, then they are
not aware. And if they are
not aware, they don’t know
what they need to do.

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Gardner: Another evolution in all of this is that there is more standardization, even at the
data center level. We saw standardization as a necessary step at the server and storage
level -- when things became too chaotic, too complex. We saw standardization as a
result of virtualization as well. Is there a standardization taking place within the
ecosystem and at that infrastructure foundation of data centers?
Standards and special sauce
Lalla: There has been a level of standardization in what I call the self-service layer, with
protocols like BACnet, Modbus, and SNMP. Those at least allow a monitoring system to
ingest information and data from a variety of diverse devices for minimally being able to
monitor how that equipment is performing.
I don’t disagree that there is an opportunity for even more standardization, because that
will make that whole self-service, delivered-as-a-service ecosystem more efficient. But
what we see in that control plane is really Vertiv’s unique special sauce. We are able to
do things between our products with solutions – like Liebert ICOM-S -- that allow our
thermal products to work better together than if they were operating independently.
You are going to see an evolution of continued innovation in peer-to-peer networking in
the control plane that probably will not be open and standard. But it will provide
advances in how our products work together. You will see in that self-service, as-a-
service, and delivered-service plane continued support for open standards and protocols
so that we can manage more than just our own equipment. Then our customers can
manage and monitor more of their own equipment.
And this special sauce, which includes
the data lakes and algorithms -- a lot of
intellectual property and capital in
building those algorithms and those
outcomes -- help customers operate
better. We will probably stay close to the
vest in the short term, and then we’ll see
where it goes over time.
Gardner: You earlier mentioned moving data centers to the edge. We are hearing an
awful lot architecturally about the rationale for not moving the edge data to the cloud or
the data center, but instead moving the computational capabilities right out to the edge
where that data is. The edge is where the data streams in, in massive quantities, and
needs to be analyzed in real-time. That used to be the domain of the operational
technology (OT) people.
As we think about data centers moving out to the edge, it seems like there’s a bit of an
encroachment or even a cultural clash between the IT way of doing things and the OT
way of doing things. How does Vertiv fit into that, and how does making data center-as-
[Vertiv’s] special sauce, which
includes the data lakes and
algorithms – a lot of intellectual
property and capital in building those
algorithms and those outcomes –
helps customers operate better.

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a-service help bring the OT and IT together -- to create a whole greater than the sum of
the parts?
OT and IT manage better together
Lalla: I think maybe there was a clash. But with modular data centers and things like
SmartAisle and SmartRow that we do today, they could be fully contained, standalone
systems. Increasingly, we are working with strategic IT partners on understanding how
that ecosystem has to work as a complete solution -- not with power and cooling
separate from IT performance, but how can we take the best of the OT world power and
cooling and the best of the IT world and combine that with things like alarms and fire
suppression. We can build a remote management and monitoring solution that can be
outsourced if you wanted, to consume it as a service, or in-sourced if you want to do it
yourself.
And there’s a lot of work to do in that space. As an industry, we are in the early stages,
but I don’t think it’s hard to foresee a modular data center that should operate holistically
as opposed to just the sum of its parts.
Gardner: I was thinking that the OT-IT thing was just an issue at the edge. But it sounds
like you’re also referring to it within the data center itself. So flesh that out a bit. How do
OT and IT together -- managing all the IT systems, components, complexity,
infrastructure, support elements -- work in the intelligent, data center-as-a-service
approach?
Lalla: There is the data center infrastructure management (DCIM) approach, which
says, “Let’s bring it all together and manage it.” I think that’s one way of thinking about
OT and IT, and certainly Vertiv has solutions in that space with products like TrellisTM.
But I actually think about it as: Once
the data is liberated, how do we take
the best of computing solutions,
data analytics solutions, and stuff
that was born in other industries and
apply that to how we think about
managing, monitoring, and servicing
all of the equipment in our industrial
OT space?
It’s not necessarily that OT and IT are one thing, but how do we apply the best of all of
technology solutions? Things like security. There is a lot of great stuff that’s emerged for
security. How do we take a security-solutions perspective in the IT space if we are going
to get more connected in the OT space? Well, let’s learn from what’s going on in IT and
see how we can apply it to OT.
How do we take the best of computing
solutions, data analytics solutions, and
stuff that was born in other industries and
apply that to how we think about
managing, monitoring, and servicing all of
the equipment in our industrial OT space?

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Just because DCIM has been tackled for years doesn’t mean we can’t take more of the
best of each world and see how you can put those together to provide a solution that’s
differentiated.
I go back to the Liebert ICOM-S solution, which uses desktop computing and gateway
technology, and application development running on a high-performance IT piece of
gear, connected to OT gear to get those products that normally would work separately to
actually work more seamlessly together. That provides better performance and efficiency
than if those products operated separately.
Liebert ICOM-S is a great example of where we have taken the best of the IT world
compute technology connectivity and the best of the OT world power and cooling and
built a solution that makes the interaction differentiated in the marketplace.
Gardner: I’m glad you raised an example because we have been talking at an abstract
level of solutions. Do you have any other use cases or concrete examples where your
concept for infrastructure data center-as-a-service brings benefits? When the rubber hits
the road, what do you get? Are there some use cases that illustrate that?
Real LIFE solutions
Lalla: I don’t have to point much further than our Vertiv LIFE Services remote
monitoring solution. This solution came out a couple years ago, partly from our
Chloride® Group acquisition many years ago. LIFE Services allows customers to
subscribe to have us do the remote monitoring, remote management, and analytics of
what’s happening -- and whenever possible do the preventative care of their networks.
And so, LIFE is a great example of a
solution with connectivity, with the
right data flowing from the products,
and with the right IT gear so our
personnel take the workload away
from the customer and allow us to
deliver a solution. That’s one example
of where we are delivering as-a-
service for our customers.
We are also working with customers -- and we can’t expose who they are -- to bring their
data into our large data lake so we can help them better predict how various elements of
their ecosystem will perform. This helps them better understand when they need just-in-
time service and maintenance versus break/fix service and maintenance.
These are two different examples where Vertiv provides services back to our customers.
One is running a network operations center (NOC) on their behalf. Another uses the data
lake that we’ve assimilated from billions of records to help customers who want to
predict things and use the broad knowledge set to do that.
LIFE is a great example of a solution
with connectivity, with the right data
flowing from the products, and with the
right IT gear so our personnel take the
workload away from the customer and
allow us to deliver a solution.

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Gardner: We began our conversation with all the great things going on in modern data
center infrastructure and solutions to overcome obstacles to get there, but economics
plays a big role, too. It’s always important to be able to go to the top echelon of your
company and say, “Here is the math, here’s why we think doing data center
modernization is worth the investment.”
What is there about creating that data lake, the intellectual property, and the insights that
help with data center economics? What’s the total cost of ownership (TCO) impact? How
do you know when you’re doing this right, in terms of dollars and cents?
Uptime is money
Lalla: It’s difficult to generalize too much but let me give you some metrics we care
about. Stuff is going to break, but if we know when it’s going to break -- or even if it does
break -- we can understand exactly what happened. Then we can have a much higher
first-time fix rate. What does that mean? That means I don’t have to come out twice, I
don’t have to take the system out of commission more than once, and we can have
better uptime. So that’s one.
Number two, by getting the data we can
understand what’s going on with the
network time-to-repair and how long it takes
us from when we get on-site to when we
can fix something. Certainly it’s better if you
do it the first time, and it’s also better if you
know exactly what you need when you’re
there to perform the service exactly the way
it needs to be done. Then you can get in and out with minimal disruption.
A third one that’s important -- and one that I think will grow in importance -- is we’re
beginning to measure what we call service avoidance. The way we measure service
avoidance is we call up a customer and say, “Hey, you know, based on all this
information, based on these predictions, based on what we see from your network or
your systems, we think these four things need to be addressed in the next 30 days. If
not, our data tells us that we will be coming out there to fix something that broken as
opposed to fixing it before it breaks.” So service avoidance or service simplification is
another area that we’re looking at.
There are many more -- I mean, meeting service level agreements (SLAs), uptime, and
all of those -- but when it comes to the tactical benefits of having smarter products, of
being more connected, liberating data, and consuming that data and using it to make
better decisions as a service -- those are the things that customers should expect
differently.
Certainly, it’s better if you [fix] it
the first time, and it’s also better
if you know exactly what you
need when you’re there to
perform the service exactly the
way it needs to be done.

10. Page 10 of 12
Gardner: And in order to enjoy those economic benefits through the Vertiv approach
and through data center-as-a-service, does this scale down and up? It certainly makes
sense for the larger data center installations, but what about a small- to medium-sized
business (SMB)? What about a remote office, or a closet and a couple of racks? Does
that make sense, too? Do the economic and the productivity benefits scale down as well
scale up?
Lalla: Actually when we look at our data, more customers who don’t have all the
expertise to manage and monitor their single-phase or small three-phase or Liebert CRV
[cooling] units, and they don’t have the skill set -- those are the customers that really
appreciate what we can do to help them. It doesn’t mean that they don’t appreciate it as
you go up the stack, because as you go up the stack what those customers appreciate
isn’t the fact that they can do some of the services themselves. They may be more of a
self-service-oriented customer, but what they increasingly are interested in is how we’re
using data in our data lake to better predict things that they can’t predict by just looking
at their own stuff.
So, the value shifts depending on where
you are in the stack of complexity,
maturity, and competency. It also varies
based on hyperscale, colocation,
enterprise, small enterprise, and point-of-
sale. There are a number of variables so
that’s why it’s difficult to generalize. But
this is why the themes of productivity,
smarter products, edge ecosystems, and data liberation are common across all those
segments. How they apply the value that’s extracted in each segment can be slightly
different.
Gardner: Suffice it to say data center-as-a-service is highly customizable to whatever
organization you are and wherever you are on that value chain.
Lalla: That’s absolutely right. Not everybody needs everything. Self-service is on one
side and as-a-service is on the other. But it’s not a binary conversation.
Customers who want to do most of the stuff themselves with technology, they may need
only a little information or help from Vertiv. Customers who want most of their stuff to be
managed by us -- whether it’s storage systems or large systems -- we have the
capability of providing that as well. This is a continuum, not an either-or.
Gardner: Steve, before we close out, let’s take a look to the future. As you build data
lakes and get more data, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) are right
around the corner. They allow you to have better prediction capabilities, do things that
you just simply couldn’t have ever done in the past.
The value shifts depending on
where you are in the stack of
complexity, maturity, and
competency. It also varies based on
hyperscale, colocation, enterprise,
small enterprise, and point-of-sale.

11. Page 11 of 12
So what happens as these products get smarter, as we are collecting and analyzing that
data with more powerful tools? What do you expect in the next several years when it
comes to the smarter data center-as-a-service?
Circle of knowledge gets smart
Lalla: We are in the early stages, but it’s a great question, Dana. There are two
outcomes that will benefit all of us. One, that information with the right algorithms,
analysis, and information is going to allow us to build products that are increasingly
smarter.
There is a circle of knowledge. Products produce information going to the data lake, we
run the right algorithms, look for the right pieces of information, feed that back into our
products, and continually evolve the capability of our products as time goes on. Those
products will break less, need less service, and are more reliable. We should just expect
that, just as you have seen in other industries. So that’s number one.
Number two, my hope and belief are that we move from a break-fix mentality or
environment of where we wait for something to show up on a screen as an alarm or an
alert. We move from that to being highly predictive and just-in-time.
As an industry -- and certainly at Vertiv
-- first-time fix, service avoidance, and
time for repair are all going to get
much better, which means one simple
thing for our customers. They are
going to have more efficient and well-
tuned data centers. They are going to
be able to operate with higher rates of uptime. All of those things are going to result in
goodness for them -- and for us.
Gardner: I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it there. We have been exploring how
automation, self-healing, and increasingly intelligent data center designs are delivering
what amounts to data centers-as-a-service. And we’ve learned how modern data center
strategies will extend to the computing edge and beyond.
So please join me in thanking our guest, Steve Lalla, Executive Vice-President of Global
Services at Vertiv. Thank you so much, Steve.
Lalla: Thanks, Dana.
Gardner: And a big thank you as well to our audience for joining us for this sponsored
BriefingsDirect data center strategies interview. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at
Interarbor Solutions, your host for this ongoing series of Vertiv-sponsored discussions.
First-time fix, service avoidance, and
time for repair are all going to get
much better, which means … our
customers are going to have more
efficient and well-tuned data centers.

12. Page 12 of 12
Thanks again for listening. Please pass this along to your community and do come back
next time.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Vertiv.
A discussion on how intelligent data center designs and components are delivering what amounts
to data centers-as-a-service to SMBs, enterprises, and public sector agencies. Copyright
Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2019. All rights reserved.
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