ABB Offers Free Preview Version of Decathlon DCIM Software

Ramping up customers into Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) quickly remains a primary concern of vendors. This is the impetus behind ABB’s free version of Decathlon, its DCIM software that helps data center operators monitor their power meters. The free version of Decathlon allows data center managers to get a hands-on experience with remote monitoring of up to 50 power meters. The goal is to demonstrate the software's value and ramp more customers into Decathlon.

DCIM is a big investment and a time consuming project. Vendors have been turning to different tactics to get their foot in the door – for example, Nlyte’s SaaS version. Getting customers to try the product is a big hurdle.

Decathlon Preview for power meters is available at no cost through the Decathlon web page. The full ABB Decathlon provides tools to manage a flexible network of power, cooling and IT systems for maximum reliability, energy efficiency and optimal utilization of all data center assets. Decathlon Preview for power meters is trial software designed to provide hands-on experience with a specific feature of ABB Decathlon. The full version supports monitoring of 5,000 or more meters running virtually any protocol.

Trial period runs for 21 days, with an option to extend through simple license renewal on 21-day calendar cycles. Decathlon Preview for power meters displays the data in ready-made dashboards with phasor diagrams, flicker indication, harmonics histograms and waveform traces.

Rich Ungar, global head of R&D for Decathlon at ABB, said the preview version was "a simple and cost-free way to discover how easily power quality can be monitored across an entire data center."

The goal is to demonstrate value and get DCIM into customer hands easily. Decathlon Preview for power meters demonstrates how data center managers can resolve the complexities of integrating the performance data of all the equipment in a data center into a single operational view. Through that single pane view, both ABB Decathlon and the Preview version allow data center managers to easily access, view and manage system performance data from the critical power path.

The complete ABB Decathlon system allows users to create more dashboards, use preconfigured or custom reports, see where meters physically reside and compare meter values with aggregated results from other power-related data.