The wealth of information that can be gathered by Concurrent COMMAND’s scalable architecture, and its extensive compatibility with third party systems, means that data centre owners and colocation providers can quickly and easily access meaningful data in order to improve resiliency, increase operational efficiencies and reduce energy costs.
Version 6 boasts significant enhancements to the product’s visual asset management capabilities, with an extended database that details both facilities and IT assets, and the ability to combine asset data with actively monitored metrics. This adds powerful tools for capacity planning, not only through the visualisation of available load, space and power, but also by predicting potential demand based on historical data from any source. The same capability also allows users to make informed OPEX vs. CAPEX decisions: for example, by comparing asset depreciation costs against energy consumption costs.
Comprehensive power chain management also forms part of the expanded asset management functionality, with the ability to trace power across the data centre: from power sources, through generators, UPSes, power distribution units, down to individual IT assets. This allows users to understand the inherent risk in the delivery of key IT services by visualising the reliance of individual assets or groups of assets on upstream power.
Also new in this release is the ability to control devices as part of a user-defined workflow. With read/write support for the Modbus, SNMP and IPMI protocols, an interface to common Virtual Machine management platforms, and the ability to control third-party PDUs, it is now possible to define automated procedures for optimising data centre performance in real time.
“Version 6 of Concurrent COMMAND represents a major milestone for the company. Not only have we streamlined the user experience in order to make our customers’ lives easier, but we’ve added a number of powerful new features that differentiates both our product and our approach.”, said Michael Rudgyard, CTO and founder. “This version also lays the foundation for some exciting new capabilities planned in 2015.”
A key focus of version 6 was rapid deployment, which has seen a number of updates, such as the ability to import asset data by CSV file, bulk configuration of Modbus and SNMP devices, and drag and drop functionality for quick configuration of IT assets.
It has also seen the first step towards a range of products aimed specifically at the colocation market with the introduction of read-only dashboard users. This new feature will allow colocation providers to easily share real-time metrics with their customers through their own managed portal.