Power Conditioning

Data centers propel power conditioning

Given the power crisis in India, data centers, SMBs, large business and home users are all buying UPS for business continuity. By Nivedan Prakash

With India assuming a key role in the Asian economy, businesses have become attuned to the fact that they need to be robust in terms of infrastructure to attract and retain investors. Hence, Business Critical Continuity is being viewed strategically and upcoming businesses are realizing the importance of factoring and aligning it as a key component in their overall business models.

Today, the Indian power conditioning market has almost touched Rs 2,000 crores after registering a growth of 30% in 2007. The market is becoming more sensitive and maturing to the evolving needs of businesses. Tejas Seth, Director, Asia Powercom, said, “The UPS market in India is growing at 30% per annum. Currently it is estimated to be 3 million units per year and the connect ratio should be 48% to 50%. We expect this to keep growing at about 25% to 30% for the next two to three years.”

In India, Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata and Bangalore have been the largest markets for power UPS products. However, there has been a shift towards B and C class cities. These locations are fast becoming global hubs in terms of R&D, ITES and BPO, retail, and manufacturing, and given the criticality of operations undertaken in these sectors, there is an increasing need for comprehensive network uptime solutions. Besides, given the upward spiral in terms of PC penetration in these cities, UPS sales in these markets have been showing a marked growth.

SMBs and SOHO driving the market

The most prominent sectors prompting an exponential growth of the UPS market are the SMB and SOHO segments. According to Seth, “SOHO is generally using one or two or a maximum of three computers and a capacity of 1 KVA UPS serves their requirement. Together home along with SOHO and SMB segments account for about 75% of the market. The balance 25% market comprises of sales to large enterprises. Indian SMBs have started looking for quality products.”

“As the economy is booming so is the SMB segment and places such as hotels, restaurants, theaters, and offices are all looking for uninterrupted power, fueling growth. In the SOHO segment, users do not want to be without power—be it for entertainment or for comfort. Usage of PC/laptop and other allied products is one the major factors that has helped the UPS market grow. In a nutshell the SMB segment is growing much faster than SOHO,” said Suresh Pansari, Managing Director, Rashi Peripherals.

Pansari added, “Increased demand, especially from the home and SOHO segment has been fueling the growth of UPS market primarily in the entry-level segment. Similarly, to safeguard and protect PCs/data and ensure trouble-free operations, the SOHO and SMB segments are going in for UPS systems, keeping the market growing.”

The Indian SMB market is a gold mine waiting to be tapped. About 54% of the IT spend in the country comes from the flourishing small and mid-sized enterprise segment, which is growing at 20% per annum.

According to IDC, in 2007 there were about 1.7 million organizations that could be classified as SMBs or SOHO set-ups. These organizations spent in the region of Rs 3,400 crore on IT products and services. They ran on a daily revenue generation model and for them, every transaction was important and valuable. Given the importance of uptime, most customers in this segment look for longer backup time along with reliable hardware protection. The SOHO segment represents a tremendous business opportunity for players aiming to provide superior technology at an affordable price point. Even at an individual level the number of people using PCs is increasing phenomenally in India with the rise in awareness and education.

Sandeep Nair, Managing Director, Emerson Network Power India, said, “In the SMB segment, the awareness of business continuity solutions is growing at a fast pace and SMBs are realizing the importance of network uptime. Indian SMBs are extremely price conscious, however and power conditioning equipment along with UPS, have to be designed bearing this factor in mind.”

Higher capacity shipment

“SMBs are going for up to 10 KVA or a maximum of 15 KVA UPS systems and the majority of them are looking for entry-level UPS. As far as SOHO is concerned, they are totally dependent on low-end UPS and at the most in the online segment it can be 1, 2 or 3 KVA,” said Bhaskar G T, Business Head-UPS, Lipi Data Systems.

Even the growing sales of PCs and servers in India have been responsible for the rising demand for UPSs. The desktop and notebook market grew 20% year-on-year, with 6.5 million units shipped into the country in 2007, as compared to 5.4 million units in 2006, according to IDC’s latest India quarterly PC tracker and this has had a direct influence on UPS sales. According to IDC, increased purchasing by the government and medium-sized businesses has propelled growth. As long as the economy keeps up its 8% and above pace, computer makers expect to see India beginning to mirror China’s voracious appetite for technology. Resultantly, the UPS market is surging to an all time high.

Above all, the growing vertical penetration into B and C class cities is seen as a factor driving the growth of the Indian UPS market. Vendors have identified a tremendous scope to induce a better appreciation of uptime criticality in B and C class cities as they start driving growth across all IT products. Emerson has been aggressively driving a ‘reach out’ plan aimed at the B and C class cities, including markets such as Pune, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Cochin, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Indore, Guwahati, Jamshedpur, etc. To develop an Uptime Solutions Value Network in each of these cities, the company has a total of 20 plus city-based branch managers in place.

Commented Nair, “As part of this ‘reach out’ plan formulated specifically for B and C class cities, Emerson tries to interface closely with all potential segments, forging stronger business relationships with partners and also networks closely with various influencers such as architects, infrastructure consultants, and electrical contractors getting them to become part of the company’s ‘Uptime Solution Value Network’ concept. This will be followed in 2008 as well.”

Data centers propelling the market

UPS is an integral part of a successful data center. To maintain the health of a data center, continuous monitoring is required.

Pansari pointed out, “Once a data center is up and running, it just not possible for any company to leave it even for a moment. Since power plays an important role, not only the availability of uninterrupted power but also clean power is essential. Apart from that the whole design and layout of the data center has to be done keeping in mind future growth and scalability.” Today to get a data center up and running, companies need a solution rather than a piecemeal solution and this is the reason that we see more vendors moving towards this solution. India isn’t ready for the concept of a green data center as this is a little expensive and it will take time to be part of the business mainstream.

In today’s 24x7 world of information availability, on-demand services, and round-the-clock commerce sites, companies are adding high-performance servers, storage and other equipment to their data centers to satisfy user and customer demand. As a result, companies find they need more ‘continuous’ power to run and cool this equipment. At the same time, the cost of electricity is on the rise. Many companies are trying to be good corporate citizens by becoming green (or at least greener). The combination of these factors is forcing many IT departments to evaluate their data center power consumption and find ways to become more energy-efficient.

“Realizing this need to cut costs and save energy, Emerson started propagating the benefits of energy-efficient or green data centers. These data centers are a repository for the storage, management and dissemination of data in which the mechanical, lighting, electrical and computer systems are designed for maximum energy efficiency and minimum environmental impact,” said Nair. He pointed out that Emerson pioneered and launched the concept of ‘Adaptive Architecture’, which consists of an array of products and technologies designed to adapt to changes in technology or business environments, while maintaining, or improving, availability and efficiency. According to Nair, the company has been promoting and conveying the benefits of going green to the customer at large through all forms of communications.

Nair added, “With our Adaptive Architecture, you can respond to rising energy costs with high-efficiency power and cooling solutions, remove barriers to new technology deployments imposed by power and cooling limitations, increase computing capacity without building a new facility, add redundancy to achieve higher levels of availability without disrupting operations, and add power and cooling capacity without impacting system reliability.”

Besides, in any data center 51% of the energy is used by components like cooling, lightning devices, UPS and other passive devices. Cooling and air movement alone constitute 40% of total energy consumption in data centers. Therefore, designing an optimal data center keeping the power management and cooling in mind is critical for a green data center. Based on the requirement per rack, the cooling and power management must be designed at the rack level to avoid any wastage of energy within the data center.

The electricity usage costs have become an increasing fraction cost of the total cost of ownership (TCO) for data centers. It is possible to dramatically reduce the electrical consumption of typical data centers through appropriate design of the infrastructure and the IT architecture. By optimizing energy in an appropriate manner, companies can not only save up to 40% of the cost but also reduce the heat emission and increase available space inside data centers.

Bhaskar commented, “In data centers, you need UPS with 100% uptime, which means it needs to work 24x7 and 365 days. But at the end of the day, it is a machine and it can fail at any point of time. That is why there is concept called ‘parallel redundancy’ wherein if any UPS goes down, then automatically another one takes up that operation so that the entire functionality of any organization does not get affected.”

Verticals dominating the market

The verticals that are consuming IT products in a big way are telecom, IT, ITES, industrial, BFSI, insurance sector, and processing and critical medical applications. One industry that is often underestimated but today accounts for a large portion of IT spending and therefore critical infrastructure is the government.

Seth commented, “The use of UPS is differentiated into commercial or consumer use. So we would say that for commercial use verticals are many and currently the ones growing are the BFSI sector, government organizations, and educational institutes.”

Leading UPS technologies

Newer technologies are amicable with the Indian power conditions which are very diverse in different pockets of the country. While the metros have a good power supply, the interiors reflect a different picture altogether. As one moves towards the interiors, one will realize that there are frequent power cuts on a daily basis, unclean power and other basic constraints like earthing, cabling and lack of a viable infrastructure that compound the problem. New technologies in the UPS segment are aimed at either increasing efficiency or decreasing cost or both at the same time.

For example, a UPS feature called Load Bus Synchronization (LBS) keeps the output of two or more independent systems in synchronization, even when they are operating from different power sources. Any UPS will typically synchronize to its bypass source. As long as the UPS systems are tied to the same input and bypass sources, they will automatically stay in synchronization. Take for example a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) based UPS. UPS were traditionally designed as analog circuitry but a DSP based UPS offers sophisticated control algorithms with highly flexible software, the ability to add user interfaces, reduce components, introduce testing procedures, and increase reliability. Hence a DSP based UPS is a digital UPS which offers higher performance for a lower cost.

Some of the other leading UPS technologies are online double conversion IGBT-based 9-12 pulse with active power factor correction; high frequency-based design; active power factor correction; small footprint; and SNMP, along with software controlling the network.

Meanwhile, many enterprises have shown interest in the concept of extreme density cooling as this is refrigerant-based cooling. Explained Nair, “The way organizations are expanding in the future is uncertain and this solution comes in handy as it offers reliability, flexibility, and low TCO.” The company has worked with organizations like Bharti, ABB, Dell, GMR, and is also closely working with retail giants for energy efficient data centers.

Going forward the energy crisis is not going to change and is only expected to get worse from here. Given increasing cost of energy businesses are opting for greener data center that do not suck energy and cooling. So a lot of data centers have started to factor the energy and cooling costs and now want to optimize the same.

nivedan.prakash@expressindia.com