Whitepaper

Critical infrastructure is becoming increasingly vulnerable, heightening the risk of more frequent power outages. Coupled with escalating electricity consumption, there is an emerging risk for a widening gap between the demand for power and its availability, adversely affecting the likelihood of power shortages to occur more frequently.

Today, monitoring of critical applications and systems is vital in most industries. The possibility of continuously receiving indications and alerts is often key for avoiding crises and for maintaining high accessibility. Research shows that initial efforts of smart alarm management can reduce total alarms with 40-50%. The Operation Center is based on an intelligent cloud platform that monitors and provides insight into the mission-critical infrastructure. A transparency that makes previously unobserved but important information available.

As services, processes and everyday life become increasingly digitized, availability could be the difference between success or total failure. The pandemic has highlighted the necessity of a robust digital infrastructure as many office workers now run their everyday operations from home. Basic resources such as power and network supply have become even more critical. However, the prevailing worldwide health crisis also affects the human resources needed to keep operations running, and a shortage of key staff could currently constitute the most vulnerable component of the infrastructure ecosystem.

More and more companies are adopting digital strategies to keep up with the competition or try to disrupt markets. Driven by new technology and forever changing the way we work, affecting even the core business models of companies, digitalization is on most decision makers agenda.

Coromatic has put together a program for quality control and operation of data centers and other business-critical infrastructure. The program has been donated to Open Compute Project (OCP) and is free to use to increase the quality of operations in mission critical facilities.
The objective of this paper is to disseminate the program to increase the efficiency of operations and to codify effective processes and routines.

OCP offers a platform for openly sharing intellectual property and encourage the IT-industry to evolve, much like open projects in the software industry. The purpose of this whitepaper is to make Coromatics services known while encouraging the inclusion of the OCP program in all development projects. If you are unfamiliar with Coromatic Critical Facilities Operations (CFOPS) Framework, it's time to gain insight.

What emerging types of datacenters are there and can we, based on present conditions, form an idea on how to develop resilient operations? No doubt, datacenters will continue to be a business-critical resource in the future. New business requirements determine how we optimize the operation of IT and datacenters based on new conditions. Solutions for energy efficiency, technology integration and Edge computing will shape our future datacenters. What trends can be identified impacting how we build and use existing datacenters, optimally?

This year’s survey focuses on the critical success factors for transforming and running a highly digitized business. With the introduction of Internet of things and edge computing, customers are today facing old challenges in a new world of increased communication to and with critical resources. How well are investments in critical infrastructure aligned to enterprise business strategy? Are companies prepared to expand their business into new arenas, i.e. will their critical infrastructure support the updated business models?

Edge computing is already influencing businesses and organizations. The technology means new business opportunities for better service, increased efficiency and reduced costs. However, certain requirements will need to be fulfilled to implement new technology and start using it for business development. In this whitepaper we look at how to apply edge computing.

Energy efficiency has been on the agenda in most businesses for quite some time. What should a strategy contain to continuously obtain energy and environmental savings? Are we not already aware in the business world, how to manage an energy efficient business? Do mission critical environments and high availability put specific demands on energy monitoring and how energy management should be performed?

Digitalization enables things we could once only dream of, while at the same time challenging traditional business models. Although digitalization brings many new opportunities, it places entirely new demands on infrastructure, with seemingly basic aspects as power supply and data communication becoming crucial for maintaining enterprise operations.

Do you want to be invited to our next survey, please contact goran.egnell@coromatic.com

In March 2016, Coromatic concluded its annual Critical Facilities Site Manager Survey. More than 330 site managers from organizations in 24 different countries responded to questions about the maturity of their organizations’ approach to Critical Facilities site operations.

Many companies today are contemplating moving into the cloud, either partially or through fully outsourcing their IT services and operations. Many more are already in the cloud. They are seeing the cost benefits of receiving cheaper IT-services, applications, functions and storage via cloud access through the internet rather than via the on-site in-house managed services of old.

In 2015, Coromatic concluded its annual Critical Facilities Site Management Survey. More than 100 site managers in different countries responded to questions about the maturity of their organizations’ approach to Critical Facilities site operations. The questions spanned the areas of business dependency, business demand and budgeting of sites, both for operations and site investments.

In 2015, Coromatic Group concluded a Critical Facilities study covering the years 2000-2013. The scope was of the Nordic hospital market and its reliance on two mission critical functions, power and communications, taking into consideration the increased amount of data being processed in different systems.

In recent years, the data center sector has investigated varying solutions for lowering environmental impact. Initially, stakeholders talked about green IT, i.e., electricity that supplied the centers should be green in the sense that energy came from renewable sources such as solar, wind, or water. Now, energy generation and measurement methods are far more sophisticated, because all stakeholders increasingly demand climate-smart solutions in every process phase.

In our increasingly digitized world, infrastructures that manage data traffic are increasingly mission-critical. From the days when network- and data-communication systems equated with data centers in basements, their importance gradually became central.