ABB, HPE and Rittal unveil turnkey data centre for industrial plants

ABB, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Rittal have announced Secure Edge Data Center (SEDC) for industrial and telecommunications environments, designed to allow organisations to run enterprise-grade IT in close proximity to their operational technology (OT) environments, machines and equipment to enable low-latency, secure and reliable digital processes.

Gartner says that currently, around 10% of enterprise-generated data is created and processed outside a traditional centralised data centre or cloud. By 2022, Gartner predicts this figure will reach 50%.¹ Also, the market for so-called micromodular data centres is growing rapidly. According to 451 Research, the market has seen an annual growth rate faster than 50% on average over the last three years and it will continue to expand with initiatives like 5G and the ongoing OT-IT convergence.²

Responding to this demand, the SEDC provides a turnkey and resilient data centre environment optimised to operate in harsh environments. It enables customers to run data acquisition, analytics and control processes near industrial equipment to avoid the latency, security and reliability issues associated with data communication through remote IT systems.

Users can get started quickly, since the system is delivered as a factory-integrated and tested turnkey solution, fully equipped with preconfigured HPE software-defined infrastructure, ready to operate within 12 weeks. Securing digital processes is easy with an IP55-rated enclosure, physically protecting against humidity, dust and dirt, with integrated cooling and fire suppression from Rittal and redundant power supply from ABB with backup power.

Scalability is built in, with the SEDC easily expandable in steps of 5, 10 and 20 kW to support increasing IT workloads. The SEDC and its infrastructure can also be remotely monitored and managed across all locations to ensure high availability without requiring specialised staff on-site.

By equipping the SEDC with hybrid platforms such as HPE ProLiant for Microsoft Azure Stack, customers can deploy Azure-consistent applications to their preferred location — on HPE infrastructure in the SEDC or a data centre, as well as in the Microsoft Azure public cloud — to meet their specific requirements regarding performance, security or cross-site collaboration.

“ABB is very conscious that when our customers start their journey for new digital services and enter initiatives like IoT and Industry 4.0, they need a secure and stable infrastructure close to the operations. Our Secure Edge Data Center is providing them with those capabilities with an off-the-shelf proven data centre solution,” said Ciarán Flanagan, head of Global Data Center Segment at ABB.

“More and more companies realise they have to equip their machines and plants with intelligence to capture the value of their industrial data. This requires running enterprise-grade IT systems at close range to the operational technology equipment, creating actionable insights and automatic action in real time,” said Volkhard Bregulla, vice president global sales, manufacturing, automotive and IoT, HPE.

“Edge computing requires IT solutions that can be implemented rapidly and safely. With the SEDC, we provide our joint customers with a resilient, scalable and secure turnkey solution for the requirements of the Internet of Things and other low-latency scenarios. This gives us a broader reach to help enterprises quickly with high-end complete data centre solutions according to their needs,” said Andreas Keiger, executive vice president global business unit IT, Rittal.

References

1. Van der Meulen R 2017, What Edge Computing Means for Infrastructure and Operations Leaders, Gartner, <<https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/what-edge-computing-means-for-infrastructure-and-operations-leaders/leaders/>>.
2. 451 Research 2018, Suppliers of micro-modular datacenters think big by going small, <<https://451research.com/report-short?entityId=94385>>.