SECURE THE EDGE: To sell power in small spaces, look the big picture. + Find the revenue hiding in your existing client database + Shape the sales conversation with your client + Keep pace with your client’s Edge strategy + Plus: APC’s latest technologies for Edge computing + Examples of real Edge computing deployments
How Edge Computing can meet your customers’ challenges Many Australian companies are chest-deep in Digital Transformation but are only now discovering thehidden obstacles below the surface. Stringent IT security requirements can be difficult to implement in the cloud; challenging application uptime SLAs require a great deal of trust in a cloud provider, and data sovereignty regulations mean some data simply can’t be stored on the other side of the globe in a different legal environment. Many of your customers will already be looking to Edge Computing for the answers, creating a new opportunity for smart resellers to generate new business by working with them to understand their pain points and future needs.
7 drivers of growth in Edge 1. Low latency: Edge brings absolute control of applications back to IT, and low-latency compute power as close to the point of processing as possible, while remaining part of the modern fabric of a hybrid IT architecture. 2. Data protection & privacy: It can help organisations in segments like healthcare and government, where data simply must stay on-premises, to retain absolute control over that data without the high data centre cost structure.
3. Mobile workforces: For companies looking to enable mobile workforces, Edge Computing can ensure that the backend infrastructure performs superbly – because once mobile network latency is unavoidably part of the application delivery chain, there’s no room for other slowdowns.
4. Customer experience: Improving customer experience is a becoming a key competitive differentiator for many organisations. According to Forrester research, 68 per cent of global business leaders say it’s a high or critical priority for their organisation. 1 If a system isn’t working smoothly, a customer will go to a competitor with a better performing front-end.
5. Security: Keeping customers loyal means delivering consistently frictionless yet secure online interfaces. One major security breach spells an end for a business. 6. User Interface: In many front-of-house systems servicing customers, interactive response speed is critical, and reducing latency between those systems and the server is key to delivering smooth UX. 7. Compliance: every business is dealing with the universal challenge of complying with local regulations in a massively distributed online world. Edge deployments helpkeep the answers to those issues within the direct control of the organisation.
1 Forrester Research: Predictions 2019: Retail
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Maximising your new revenue opportunity As a technology reseller, business development is a perennial challenge. Finding new customers takes marketing dollars and manpower, and that soaks up potential profit. But new revenue streams may only be as far away as your existing customer database – look for existing customers that are undergoing Digital Transformation. Start a conversation about the speedbumps they’re experiencing. You’ll almost certainly discover clients who are ready to invest in Edge solutions. Companies going through Digital Transformation inevitably experience challenges around unpredictable, inadequate or expensive internet connectivity.
This can affect system performance or make some workloads unviable in the Cloud where high datathrough put or low latency transactions are required. This is an area where Edge computing – which puts a data centre within a customer’s network – excels. The key to success in assisting your customers along this journey is to: firstly, understand their business challenges so you can build a holistic Edge solution to meet those needs. Secondly, it’s essential to understand why Edge deployments need to be just as resilient as central data centres. Here’s why.
Why high availability of Edge solutions is so important. The below example assumes your customer is operating an application across their central DC and Edge DC sites with an availability target of 99.98% and 99.67% respectively. This means the overall availability for the application is reduced from 99.98% to 99.65%, or more specifically the risk of downtime increases by 20x if there is a failure at an Edge site. However, in most cases on premises or Edge solutions operate at much lower availability targets which further compromises application availability. With this much downtime or more at risk, what would be the impact on your customer experiencing downtime of their applications at the Edge – closest to their end users? What if this resulted in a week of downtime? Or even 3 weeks, and every year? If we focus only on the central DC availability...
But taking a customer-focused approach, to work out uptime of applications relying on both central DC & Edge: Multiply the Edge DC availability of 99.67% by the central DC availability of 99.98% = 99.65%
1.6
30.7
Hours per year downtime
99.98% Availability
Hours pear year downtime
99.65% Availability
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Are you aligned with your customers’ Edge roadmaps? Edge computing and Cloud belong together in a modern IT mix – cloud can provide broad reach, heavy duty data and long-range data processing, while Edge provides very high and consistently performing compute power, and responsiveness with low latency. Many of your clients will already be moving down the path of building Edge Computing deployments into their hybrid IT architecture. It’s therefore essential that as an IT reseller, you’re primed to identify the right equipment and services combinations to maximise your revenue and best assist customers with their solution design.
The meteoric growth in Edge computing
< 5% in 2019
50% by 2021
< 1% in 2019
50% by 2023
Large enterprises deploying at least one Edge computing use case
Large enterprises deploying at least six Edge computing use cases
Large enterprises deploying at least one Edge computing use case
Large enterprises deploying at least six Edge computing use cases
Source: Gartner 2
In the following pages, we’ll show you how leading Australian organisations have already seen results from deploying Edge Computing solutions.
Powerful computing in tiny spaces, with DC-grade resiliency Here’s three examples of how Australian organisations could add Edge to their advantage.
1. High rates of change in councils
Local councils are no longer just atown hall, a depot, a local library and a pool. They now provide Cloud services: digital rate payments, e-libraries, online ID. Staff regularly work outside the office, responding to IoT sensors in parking spaces, tracking movement of people, cars and bikes, or peak occupancy levels in public spaces. All that data needs rapid interpretation and decision-making. Edge micro data centres dotted across the municipality provide the performance needed.
2. The great unwashed spaces
Edge computing deployments aren’t always pretty. A digital geo-survey company operating in remote WA may generate so much data it regularly maxes out equipment hard drives.
Drives can’t be swapped easily in the field, so the company carries a ruggedised micro data centre. This downloads, processes and transmits data back to head office. Dusty, nearly 50 degrees C and unsheltered – that’s Edge computing. APC by Schneider can help you build reliability and certainty.
3 Speed matters
A car parked unusually close to your head office could be a security threat. Your security team wants to know immediately how long the car has been parked there. A pure Cloud solution might still be waiting to complete uploading video data for analysis. However, an Edge-based, intelligent surveillance system accumulating data in a micro data centre can provide that analysis quickly, allowing for a swift security response.
2 Source: Gartner, Exploring the Edge: 12 Frontiers of Edge computing, 6 May 2019
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Shaping the conversation with your clients… it’s about Value Creation The key to a great Edge Computing sales conversation is to start seeking to understand customers’ business processes and what customer outcomes they are trying to achieve. Once you understand the client’s strategy, objectives and current pain points, their hardware, software and services needs will become obvious. Your team may need to challenge itself to go beyond the traditional product supply-based conversation and into a business strategy and solution design mode for best results. Another key to selling Edge Computing is taking a holistic solution design approach. As a channel partner, you may consider your company expert at selling solutions to be operated in centralised data centres, or within a customers’ on premises data room, but how do you rate your ability to extend across both at once? Because Edge computing is a topology for establishing micro data centres virtually anywhere, selling Edge computing requires an end-to-end understanding of customer requirements from the DC infrastructure to the application running on a server. For example, understanding a customer’s requirements might unearth that CapEx budgets are shrinking every year. This could lead to a conversation about how APC’s new generation of Smart-UPS with Lithium Ion batteries can reduce both long term CapEx and OpEx. The expected 10-year battery life of Smart-UPS On-Line Lithium Ion – two to three times longer than lead acid batteries – can substantially reduce ongoing hardware replacement and servicing costs. According to Gartner, 90 per cent of businesses will initially identify a single use case for Edge, but over time, will identify many more – another reason to keep a regular conversation going with your client.
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Lithium Ion revolution: Extreme power density for Edge computing APC is first to market with UPS based on lithium ion battery technology and it provides a strong sales opportunity for Edge computing deployments. APC Smart-UPS Lithium Ion provides double the energy density of older Lead Acid systems, which means smaller units can be installed to achieve the same uptime protection. This is ideal for keeping the size of Edge computing micro data centres down. They can run in ambient temperatures of up to 40C without degrading, which means Edge computing micro data centres may not need dedicated air conditioning.
With distributed micro DCs across a company’s WAN, clients will want to avoid having to dispatchtechnicians to physically service system components where possible. APC Smart-UPS Lithium Ion lasts up to 10 years – two or three times longer than lead acid systems, and comes with a 5-year factory warranty. APC Smart-UPS Lithium Ion are better and safer than lithium ion batteries found in consumer devices. Apart from complying with an extremely stringent new safety standard (UL1973), the software in UPS allows extremely careful battery management.
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From $11,500 to $75,000: How to grow your sale 650% and make a stickier customer Email enquiry from your customer
The literal response
Building up the full solution opportunity
Dear Account Manager,
Dear Customer,
STEP 1: Stocktake the client’s fleet
Regarding the new branches. Can I please get a quote for 5x APC 1500VA UPSs, rack mount with network cards?
Thank you for your enquiry. We take pleasure in providing the following quote:
You found: 20 UPS devices (15 existing, 5 new)
Thanks, Customer
5x APC SmartConnect UPS, with network cards – $11,500 Sincerely, Account Manager
There are five existing sites: each have 1 Networked UPS each and 2 metered PDUs There will be five new sites: each will have 1 new Networked UPS
STEP 2: Quote the new hardware, with extended warranty 5 New Smart UPS at $1,650 5 Network management cards at $650 5 Three year warranty extensions at $350
Total opportunity: $11,500
$8,250 $3,250 $1,750
STEP 3: Add fleet-wide management capability EcoStruxure IT Expert Licenses – for all 20 devices 20 licences at $95 per device per year
$1,900
(Can be invoiced monthly and sold as a service to the customer)
STEP 4: Offer warranty extensions to three existing devices (still under factory warranty) Three year warranty extensions at $908
$2,724
STEP 5: Recommend replacing two UPS units too old to renew 2 SmartConnect UPS at $1,650 2 Three year warranty extensions at $350
$3,300 $700
STEP 6: Add Fleet Management Services Identify additional critical assets (i.e. UPS, Cooling Units, PDUs, NetBotz); offer Asset Advisor Service to existing critical devices. 10 EcoStruxure Asset Advisor (IT) License for 365 Credits at $365
$3,650 per year
Total opportunity:
revenue realised over eight years
$75,000
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Creating ongoing revenue from Edge While moving clients from reactive to predictive Most organisations have some level of proactive IT monitoring in place but not many invest in managing the health of their data room or data centres. Using unsophisticated software for this purpose can create more problems than solutions by virtue of ‘alarm storms’ but what if these alarms could be organised and prioritised in real time so that the IT team could optimize their response. APC EcoStruxure IT Expert makes monitoring efficient. It takes a customer’s problem reports and makes them more manageable and swiftly actionable. It helps customers and supporting channel partners monitor their full suite of data centre infrastructure including 3 rd party technology through its open standards and protocols. For Edge computing deployments, it provides full visibility of what’s going on in a data centre so that problems can be diagnosed remotely, rather than having to dispatch a technician to a remote location. This helps to reduce operating risk while building more intimacy with the customer and the potential to generate new annuity SaaS revenue. EcoStruxure IT Expert is vendor-neutral and aggregates log files from a wide variety of assets and centralises them in APC’s cloud platform. It then analyses them and sends alerts back to customers via dedicated iOS or Android apps. In the long term, EcoStruxure Asset Advisor can take a proactive approach by anticipating and addressing issues before they become critical. This can mitigate safety risks, avoid unplanned downtime, operational losses and expensive maintenance interventions. EcoStruxure Asset Advisor evaluates live data from assets and applies advanced analytics to identify potential threats. Once infrastructure is properly monitored, customers and their supporting channel partner can productively work together to allocate some tasks to the partner automatically and others to internal IT.
Sign for a free trial of Ecostruxure https:/ /app.upecostruxurei t.com/ manage/ register/partner Edge Challenges
EcoStruxure IT Expert
> Maintain availability
> Live alarms on your smartphone
> Constant alarms
> Visibility of equipment health
> Equipment in distributed locations
> Multi site & highly scalable
> Assets from multiple vendors
> Vendor neutral
> Cyber Security
> Always up to date
> Stay within budget
> Uses data to help make smart decisions
> Not enough staff - work-life balance
> One easy tool to manage everything
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Australian companies pushing to the Edge Prescription for success: Boehringer Ingelheim One of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, the German-headquartered, Boehringer Ingelheim group, operates globally, including A/NZ. When it needed to consolidate offices from three to one, it decided to upgrade its server room. Because Boehringer Ingelheim is a complex business including manufacturing and R&amp;D of pharmaceuticals, it required local Edge computing infrastructure to run locally installed applications. To achieve high reliability, it specified double redundancy across the UPS and cooling systems, as well as active temperature/ humidity control. On top of that it had aggressive energy efficiency targets.
APC by Schneider Electric implemented a comprehensive Edge computing solution including server racks, power distribution units (PDUs), uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) and InRow Cooling. The new infrastructure allowed Boehringer Ingelheim to reduce its server room footprint, moving from five server racks to two. “What impressed me most was the technical expertise of the engineering team. They provided us with the right solution and made the whole project trouble-free,” Boehringer Ingelheim Australia local infrastructure manager, Jason McDonald, said.
Sign/app. upecostruxurei for a freet.ctrial of Ecostruxure https:/ om/manage/ register/partner
“We now have a ‘smart’ room in New Zealand, which gives us greater control and options. We are also looking to gain further insights into the efficiency of the rooms by delving into the analytics we are now recording.” Jason McDonald Local Infrastructure Manager Boehringer Ingelheim Australia
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Networking buildings for the IoT era Behind the scenes, commercial buildings bristle with sensors, monitoring the building environment and making adjustments automatically. But with innovation comes complexity; like any evolving technology space, equipment manufacturers have different ideas about the best way to implement communication, reporting and management. Buildings often end up with multiple different building system interfaces, duplicated cabling, incompatible protocols and no single-view reporting system. Tuggeranong Office Park in Canberra wanted to take a coherent approach to building automation; it wanted all its systems on a single, secure communications platform, using best practice open standards where possible. Just as importantly, it also wanted to be ready for the proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices its tenants would be using in coming years. Its implementation partner, Airmaster, recommended standard TCP/IP and Ethernet for its new Building Services Network across its office campus. “This allowed for either a reduction or elimination of the need for multiple cabling distribution systems, parallel networks and additional head end equipment,” explained Airmaster’s Branch Manager (ACT), Rob Huntington. APC by Schneider Electric supported the construction of the stable, failsafe and resilient network by providing an Edge Computing solution to maximise availability and reduce the hardware footprint across the campus.
Read the full Tuggernong story
“It wouldn’t be possible without having faith in the power reliability which the APC by Schneider Electric edge computing infrastructure provide.” Rob Huntington Branch Manager, ACT Airmaster
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Radio star: NSW Police IT rebuild Prescription for success: Boehringer Ingelheim NSW Police serves 7.8 million people, and relies on significant infrastructure for its 430 police stations and 20,000 operational and administrative staff. However, it is particularly reliant on radio communications – NSW Police broadcasts 2.1 million messages over its radio network each year.
Reliability was the NSW Police Force’s key requirement and, after a competitive tender, APC by Schneider Electric, in partnership with Dell EMC, won the opportunity to deliver a turnkey solution. A dedicated Schneider Electric project manager worked to understand client requirements and completed the project on schedule and within budget.
The existing facility housing the mission critical radio communications infrastructure had barely evolved over recent years despite growth in demand of additional equipment and services. NSW Police realised it needed new power and cooling systems, server racks and cabinets so it decided to overhaul its radio data centre. But existing equipment had to continue operating unaffected during the rebuild, an added complexity.
Read the full NSW Police story
“Through the Dell EMC Partner Program, we have been able to connect NSW Police with a technology provider, APC by Schneider Electric, that will enable this next important phase of its’ data centre transformation.” Jade Porter Senior Director, Infrastructure Solutions Dell EMC ANZ
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Immersive education: Murdoch University Murdoch University’s School of Engineering and Information Technology wanted to build a learning environment that would emulate best-in-class production IT infrastructure, allowing its students to learn in an immersive environment. APC by Schneider Electric helped Murdoch University build an Edge computing micro data centre with a dual purpose: IT students to access half the server rack for practical components of their course; R&D students to run virtual and augmented reality simulations on the other half. APC by Schneider Electric server racks and UPSs were chosen for their reliability and robustness, with EcoStruxure IT solution added for a single pane of glass view of the integrated systems, allowing students to see at a glance what is running, and at what capacity. This also enables the School to keep its systems running smoothly, and allows it to mitigate any potential problems to ensure continual uptime.
Read the full Murdoch University story
“The day Schneider Electric came to us with EcoStruxure IT, it just materialised what IoT should actually be. EcoStruxure IT provides the environment where everything reports to a central point so you can have that global picture - and that’s what we love about the product” Jade Porter Senior Director, Infrastructure Solutions Dell EMC ANZ
Immersive education: Murdoch University Cloud-monitored UPS, at no extra cost? APC SmartConnect is a product benefit that no other UPS provider offers. This free feature can translate to revenue for resellers and partners – here’s how. Remote monitoring used to require an add-on network card and additional cost, but now the free monitoring port built into SmartConnect-enabled UPS allows remote monitoring by both users and partner. It lets managed service providers (MSPs) with the chance to monetise the monitoring by providing management services around the data from the UPS. For example, although the data is available through the Cloud interface, a customer might not regularly check it. SmartConnect interfaces directly with the ConnectWise Automate platform – it will raise a ticket if a battery in a UPS is approaching end-of-life. This creates an opportunity for the partner to proactively quote on battery replacement. Similarly, if a UPS warranty is due to expire, the UPS can signal that to the partner, and it becomes an opportunity to sell a warranty extension. 12
Seven reasons to partner with APC on Edge computing Here’s how APC by Schneider Electric keeps a singular focus on ensuring the success of its partner network.
1. Grow your business
Partnering with APC by Schneider Electric unites you with a global leader in the rapidly developing IT world and offers valuable opportunities to profitably grow your sales and service offerings.
2. Enhance your reputation
By choosing to partner with APC, you provide your customers with reliability and access to engineering expertise. Selling a quality product will enhance your reputation by default.
3. Expand your solution offering
Because APC’s full product offering is available for you to sell, you can offer your customers fully integrated solutions: scalable power and cooling, racks, power distribution, and innovative monitoring and management software for total protection of IT equipment.
4. Easily collaborate with major technology brands
Whether it’s Dell, HP or Cisco, APC has tight integration both on a technology and relationship level with a wide range of key technology vendors.
5. Benefit from technology leadership
With APC, you can be sure that your clients will use technology that has the smartest thinking applied to its design. Recent examples include APC Lithium Ion UPS – the first in market – and SmartConnect remote monitoring of UPS’ free of charge – the only vendor to offer this.
6. Add extra value to your customer proposals
The APC Trade UPS program will buy back your customer’s old UPS, irrespective of brand, when the customer buys a new APC Smart-UPS.
7.
Take advantage of the best warranty and support. APC has teams in every state dedicated to helping partners understand their customers’ digital strategies and match sales opportunities to them.
Join the industry’s best Edge computing partner program today.
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