5 Key Features In Schneider Electric's New SaaS Platform That Partners Need To Know

Schneider Boosting Partner Profitability

Schneider Electric's new Software-as-a-Service platform is tailor-made for channel partners to seek out new services opportunities around lifecycle management for customer data center and distributed environments.

"This SaaS offer presents a tremendous opportunity for our channel partners not only to address the challenges associated with the highly distributed nature of edge computing, but also for them to further differentiate themselves among their competitors," said Katie Boeh, director of channel marketing and communications for APC by Schneider Electric.

The company's new EcoStruxure IT for Partners is a cloud-based solution infused with predictive analytics, remote monitoring and lifecycle management capabilities for physical assets. CRN breaks down five key revenue enablers and incentives that partners need to know regarding Schneider's new SaaS platform.

Why EcoStruxure IT for Partners Matters

Schneider specifically designed the new solution to enable partners to build new recurring services practices around lifecycle monitoring and management particularly for cooling and power assets. EcoStruxure IT for Partners collects data and assessments on a slew of assets both inside and outside the data center such as uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs), cooling units, intelligent power distribution units (PDUs), physical security and emergency management.

"If you think about how customers manage their environments outside the data center, it's not very organized. Customers with distributed environments, like K-12 school districts or banks with branch offices, the visibility for IT staff is very limited," said Larry Hann, director of Digital Services Programs, IT Channel at APC by Schneider Electric. "This cloud-based offer is driven by a gateway which is a big data collector that sets up a virtual machine on the customer environment. It will collect all the information on all the assets in the customer environments and bring it back into this central location."

Partner Success Management Team

To quickly get partners up to speed on the new solution, Schneider Electric is giving partners access to a dedicated Partner Success Management team that provides onboarding and effectiveness expertise on EcoStruxure IT for Partners. For partners seeking to complement their service offerings with additional support, Schneider's is offering its 24/7 service bureau through its EcoStruxure Asset Advisor services for power and cooling, which currently provides access to more than 7,000 global field experts.

Free Trial, Free Vacation

North American partners who sign up for a 30-day free trial of the EcoStruxure IT for Partners will be entered to win a free vacation through the company's Gateway to Getaway contest. Over the next several months, a partner can earn an additional entry to the contest for each customer invited and connected to the EcoStruxure IT Gateway. To be eligible, partners must also schedule a demonstration with a Partner Success Management team.

" The objective is to incent the partners to go and try out the solution, and identify a customer or two to download the gateway and collect the data. For every customer that the partners signs up, they get an entry into the contest," said Hann. The contest runs through November 2018.

Vendor-Agnostic

A key differentiator with the EcoStruxure IT for Partners compared to competing vendor solutions is it's a vendor-neutral, multi-tenant platform. The solution gives visibility into a customers' infrastructure in the cloud or at the edge regardless of the vendor. Boeh said the solution “enables partners to provide customers with unparalleled insights across any vendor, positioning them as trusted advisors with their customers regardless of their existing infrastructure."

EcoStruxure IT Expert

The first application being made available on the platform is the monitoring app EcoStruxure IT Expert. The application allows partners to deliver a remote monitoring service with real-time data and proactive recommendations, aimed at reducing time to repair and improving system availability. EcoStruxure IT Expert leverages big data and intelligent benchmarking from distributed environments to the data center, providing partners a fast and easy way to deliver services and support as customers grow more dependent on their critical infrastructure.

" Through the intelligence, we can help partners have conversations with customers about not just what's going on in the physical infrastructure, but start asking questions about the stuff that's connected to it," said Hann. "We're providing the same level of management and capability you would see in the data center out to the distributed environment where you're seeing more and more technology today."