APC has announced plans to integrate APC and TAC software management platforms with IBM Tivoli Monitoring energy management software. APC and TAC offer physical infrastructure and building management systems to customers worldwide.

The integration will allow APC’s InfraStruXure Central® management platform, TAC’s building management system and IBM Tivoli Monitoring software to share key data points including alarm notifications, historical data and asset tracking information. The combined solution will deliver the visibility, control and automation needed for a more efficient enterprise by enabling optimisation of data centre physical infrastructure and building systems while maintaining IT service levels.

By integrating InfraStruXure® Central and TAC with IBM Tivoli Monitoring software, administrators will be able to view, correlate and profile the dependencies of business process and IT assets to the underlying physical infrastructure. The result will help monitor and manage efforts to reduce risk, raise data centre system availability levels and increase energy efficiency.

“Once we complete the integration with the IBM Tivoli Monitoring software, IT administrators will have the ability to make informed decisions about critical business processes, their physical infrastructure and building management systems and how to efficiently deploy their infrastructure,” said John DiPippo, senior vice president, APC Data Center Solutions, Software and Services.

“For example, a user may choose to move business critical applications to an alternate rack, row or even data centre in the event of loss of redundancy in cooling, or may choose to leave a less critical application running in the higher risk environment. Customers soon will have the ability to determine not only optimum location (physical or virtual) of IT assets, but also adapt their application usage based on historical and real-time information regarding energy use and power and cooling availability.”

APC’s suite of enterprise software solutions enable the efficient management of company-wide IT physical infrastructure including floor space, power, cooling, cabling and threat protection. APC InfraStruXure Central lowers support costs and prevents downtime through rapid problem resolution of physical and environmental issues.

“InfraStruXure Central gives us a great level of visibility and control,” said David Shaw, executive director of data centre services at Sisters of Mercy Health System in St. Louis, Mo. “Information systems infrastructure is a critical element in our ability to deliver the highest quality health care. InfraStruXure Central provides both the monitoring tool and the management reporting required to maintain the infrastructure foundation of our environment. This allows us to resolve proactively areas of risk or address interruptions before they become service outages. By sharing alerts and notifications with the IBM Tivoli Monitoring software, we will be able to understand further the mission-critical applications that may be affected by problematic events and, in turn, determine the best course of action to take to eliminate downtime.”

TAC Building Management Systems today provide integration with IBM Tivoli Monitoring software via SNMP, thus supporting timely exchange of critical process data and alarms. Through this integration, administrators will have visibility and control of the facilities systems that manage electrical distribution, heating, ventilation, lighting, air conditioning as well as security. This will provide a complete dashboard for energy management that can report on when and what is consuming the most energy. Administrators will be able to enable manual or automated facility controls based on need, power consumption and cost. Furthermore, the integration will centralise security functionality including access control, intrusion detection, event notifications and digital video management.

The combined APC, TAC and IBM Tivoli Monitoring solution will allow a user to:

• Detect and monitor real-time changes in power and cooling as well as understand the corresponding IT assets and business applications that may be affected by the change;

• Track moves, additions and changes of physical IT assets;

• Optimise utilisation of actual power, cooling and rack capacities while right-sizing the IT environment;

• Better predict and avoid potential downtime due to hardware failures or energy events;

• Track historical information regarding usage of IT assets and subsequent power and cooling requirements to better implement current and future data centre strategy;

• Integrate and centralise data centre security functionality such as access control, intrusion detection and digital video management;

• Gain visibility of enhanced building management controls for heating, ventilating and air conditioning.

APC expects that customers will have access to the integrated APC InfraStruXure Central, TAC building management system, and IBM Tivoli Monitoring solution worldwide in 2009. Today, clients can contact any of the participating companies to start the process of evaluating their current facilities and data centre strategy to manage and control their energy consumption and costs better.

APC InfraStruXure Central is available worldwide and starts with an estimated resale price of less than £5000.