ABB, TSO to Combine Facilities and IT Management Software

Data center management software startup TSO Logic has struck a technology partnership with the Swiss industrial automation giant ABB. The companies will integrate their respective software products to give data center operators a holistic view of their infrastructure, from facilities to applications.

ABB’s data center infrastructure management software Decathlon, which is designed to monitor and manage the physical facilities infrastructure, will be combined with TSO’s deep IT analytics capabilities in an integration that is promising a powerful set of capabilities for both facilities and IT teams.

When there’s a hot spot on the data center floor, for example, the solution will be able to quickly identify the applications and virtual machines running in the zone that’s producing a hot spot and recommend solutions. It will also be able to move workloads to a better location automatically if set up that way.

TSO’s software collects as much operational data as it can from data center hardware, from the virtualization layer, from applications the infrastructure hosts, and recently also from VMs running in Amazon’s cloud. It analyzes this data to assess infrastructure utilization levels and cost of running the software and offers suggestions for a more optimal deployment.

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ABB entered the space market more recently than the companies analysts generally point to as leaders in the space: Emerson Network Power, Schneider Electric, and Nlyte Software. But partly due to its extensive experience in industrial automation, its Decathlon software for data centers is considered a strong competitor in the space.

The DCIM software market is relatively small, compared to other data center technologies, but it’s also a relatively young market that’s been growing steadily. IDC predicts it will reach close to $990 million in total revenue by 2019. Its size in 2015 was over $570 million, according to the market research firm.

Read more: Who is Winning in the DCIM Software Market?