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End-to-End
Our company strategy of closing the availability gap means presenting a solution wherever and whenever our customers could experience downtime as a result of power problems.
In 1998, that strategy led us into several new market spaces. First, we drove the rapid adoption of our premium category of power protection, the Power Array. Second, we moved into the high-end of the product spectrum with the acquisition of Silcon and its range of above 20kVA products.
Symmetra Power Array success
High-power markets
Complete enterprise coverage
Symmetra Power Array success
Third, we paid special attention to the equipment that lives in the space between desktop and server: internetworking gear. Fourth, a new product offering for laptops further opened that market to the Company. Finally, we rounded out our offering with innovative and comprehensive additions to our line of enterprise power management software and accessories.We first entered the high-power space in 1997. Our introduction of the Symmetra Power Array created a new category of power protection designed for high-availability computer datacenters. For the first time anywhere, a company was offering a fully redundant power protection system. That meant power protection could operate at availability levels equal to or greater than the most advanced information technology.
As units shipped in EMEA and JPAA, the innovation quickly earned APC several major international awards, including Secure Computing “Editor’s Choice.” Symmetra also lead the pack in head-to-head competition. Throughout 1998, Symmetra enjoyed continued success as our premium availability solution.
To complement Symmetra in lower power environments, and in response to growing demands for redundant power protection solutions, the Company introduced a High Availability Redundant Switch Package, which uses two APC Smart-UPS, one backing up the other, to ensure constant availability.
High-power markets
Our customers also requested a site-wide enterprise power protection solution to both complement Symmetra and eclipse the legacy UPS systems in the 20 to 500 kVA range. In 1998, we accelerated our entry into this market space through the acquisition of Silcon. Silcon had already successfully differentiated itself in the high-power space with the kind of technological innovation our customers are accustomed to seeing from APC.
The high-power solutions in the new APC Silcon product line are designed to support not just computer systems, but entire buildings. At the other end of the Silcon spectrum, non-redundant 6, 8, and 10 kVA products compliment the Symmetra Power Array line. These new products offer a good, ultra-efficient solution to our customers wherever they do not need the premium protection of a Power Array.
Protection of internetworking gear
Along with the high-power additions to our product line, we also focused on providing several other availability solutions to ensure global, end-to-end, Nonstop Networking. Some of the most important and often unprotected equipment on the network is the internetworking gear that carries data from server to client. When a hub or router is unavailable due to a power problem, network traffic stops and immediately triggers costly support and help desk calls. According to Cisco Systems, “Power-related network downtime is a business-critical issue which prevents companies from realizing their financial objectives….” APC is in a prime position to deal with that issue.
In 1998, we introduced APC PowerStack™, a rack-mount solution designed to protect hubs, routers and switches. PowerStack ensures the uptime of the remote interconnections so critical to the availability of most networks. This product complimented our existing Smart-UPS rack-mount solutions which serve the continued need to protect multiple servers housed in rack enclosures like APC NetShelter®.
The NetShelter itself was enhanced with nearly a dozen new accessories designed to help our customers increase the availability, flexibility and security of their networks. The complete line of NetShelter products continue to act as a strong differentiator in the marketplace.
In fact, because of this continuing migration to the rack environment, we extended our Smart-UPS line to include a new rack solution. Introduced late in the year, the Smart-UPS 5000 was the industry’s slimmest 5kVA rack-mount UPS. It was designed to protect the increasingly powerful servers and internetworking products that are more frequently being housed in one rack.
Complete enterprise coverage
Because end-to-end protection doesn’t stop with the wide area network (WAN), we gave international business travelers a tool to help them breathe a little easier when plugging notebook computers into phone and power outlets: the APC SurgeArrest Notebook Pro. This globally-compatible unit offers protection against the surges that so often destroy portable computer modems and motherboards.
Another key component of our high-availability offering is end-to-end management. In 1998, we developed a new Web/SNMP management card which gives network administrators the ability to manage their APC UPSs via a Web browser or SNMP management system using a single accessory card. Web and SNMP management are two leading industry standards for network management communications. By combining these two solutions, we’ve made our customers’ jobs that much easier.
This accessory is complimented by a suite of software developments which demonstrate our continued leadership in designing and supporting solutions which integrate with customers’ existing systems. Our software developers work with industry leaders in network management to develop solutions which integrate seamlessly with the products our customers already use for network management. That way, the task of getting network administrators to adopt APC solutions is that much easier. In 1998, we lead the industry by integrating our software with Tivoli, a leading network management platform, Cabletron Spectrum, which specializes in management of internetworking gear and TopTools, HP’s proprietary enterprise management suite. We also enhanced our Web-based device manager to monitor UPSs in a mixed operating system environment. Leveraging the customer’s existing investment, whether operating system or management software, instead of forcing them to adopt a new and different solution, helps make APC the easy choice.
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Arthur Andersen
Bill Cope
Network Analyst,
Steve Blanding
Director of
Technology,
Gready Hunter
Novell NetWare Mgr.,
Houston, Texas |
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