Keysource and Schneider Electric upgrade DCIM at BSkyB

British Sky Broadcasting Group plc (BSkyB), Britain and Ireland's leading home entertainment and communications company providing services to more than 40% of homes has selected a fully integrated Schneider Electric data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) platform delivered by data centre specialists Keysource. The new DCIM solution will replace existing legacy data centre management software across the company’s data centre estate.

BSkyB operates over 1,000 IT equipment racks in 6 resilient and low PUE data centres located in the UK that host the infrastructure that supports SkyGo, NowTV and their customer management platforms to mention a few. The introduction of the new DCIM toolset follows an extensive data centre consolidation project by the company, to render its infrastructure cloud-ready and future-proof.

Riccardo Degli Effetti, Head of Data Centre Operations at BSkyB commented: ”Data Centres are at the core of IT and are responsible for consuming enormous amount of power. With our on-going commitment to reduce our carbon footprint in mind, we felt the need for a tool that would allow us to holistically monitor the performance of our DC Estate and help us in identifying opportunities to optimise our consumption whilst maximising service uptime. We know that DCIM is a journey and we wanted a long-term trustworthy partner to accompany us throughout. We believe with Keysource and Schneider we have achieved that. “

Rob Elder, Director of Keysource, said: “We are delighted that BskyB has selected Keysource to deliver this StuxureWare DCIM project. As a leading provider of media content and satellite broadcast services, BSkyB has a complex and well established set of existing systems. Our close relationship with both BSkyB and Schneider Electric has been a critical success factor to ensure all the technical, functional and service delivery standards demanded were met within an exacting timescale.”

Soeren Brogaard Jensen - VP of Enterprise Management and Software, Schneider Electric commented, “BskyB’s selection of StruxureWare for Data Centers as its preferred DCIM solution is a welcome endorsement of the technology. Schneider Electric has recently been highlighted as a leader in Gartner’s DCIM Magic Quadrant. Working in partnership with our Elite Partner, Keysource has delivered a solution which integrates DCIM software, Building Management Systems and equipment manufacturers’ tool sets into a single pane of glass.”

The Schneider Electric solution includes StruxureWare Data Center Operation, Capacity and IT Optimize applications from the comprehensive StruxureWare for Data Centers DCIM suite.

The partnership brings together the leading vendor of a full DCIM suite and a specialist data centre partner with an established track record for integrating management software including DCIM and BMS as well as other data centre and infrastructure applications.

In addition to having a very tight schedule, the project required the legacy asset database to be imported into the Schneider Electric DCIM solution without data loss. Schneider Electric also had to ensure successful integrations between StruxureWare for Data Centers and other manufacturers’ management applications so that moving forward, BSkyB’s equipment racks could be managed efficiently and effectively from a single dashboard.

Soeren Brogaard Jensen said, “StruxureWare for Data Centers is open system software, designed with open APIs to offer full management capability with applications based on open system standards.”

Rob Elder said, “BSkyB’s use of DCIM reinforces our belief that centralising information in an integrated system which links the IT and physical data centre infrastructure is the best way to scale and manage a modern distributed or hybrid data centre estate.”

The re-engineering and upgrade of tools and systems will see time savings of up to 30-50% when compared to the legacy systems and processes they replace, for example around ticket management and the deployment of new IT hardware and platforms.

After an initial RFI process BSkyB went out to competitive tender to a long list of software vendors and DCIM specialists. With a wealth of experience in data centre design, optimisation and management Keysource were invited to tender in partnership with Schneider to develop a proposition around the StruxureWare platform.
Keysource will continue to support BSkyB in the roll out of the software and in further improving efficiency and performance in what are already some of the most efficient and advanced data centres in Europe.