Welcome To The Garden Of Eaton

Eaton, the power management technology innovator, is an exception. The company already has scored big in virtualization with software that provides virtual machine live migration and cluster shutdown.

Now the company is set to take its technology lead into the stratosphere with new software and partner tools that open the door for solution providers to deliver power management consumption and monitoring at a price/performance level that simply has never been available before to SMBs. That’s no small matter given the soaring utility costs that come with building out private clouds or even hybrid clouds.

The Eaton technology, which will come in the form of an update slated for April to the company’s Intelligent Power Manager platform, is going to enable solution providers to quickly determine and monitor power consumption at the data center Power Distribution Unit and outlet levels. The new tools mean that solution providers will be able to offer cloud computing data center power management audits and monitoring aimed at reducing costs right out of the gate by as much as 15 percent to 20 percent. Not only that, solution providers will be able to export the power consumption data into an instant price quote/proposal for customers.

The technology breakthrough is not surprising given the leadership of Herve Tardy, vice president and general manager of Eaton’s distributed power quality business unit. Tardy, who was named the No. 1 channel strategist in 2011 by CRN last month, has charted an aggressive technology and channel course since launching a channel program three years ago. Tardy understands what makes solution providers tick and is determined to provide technology and programs that allow partners to move from traditional reselling and on-premise progressive models to become transformative cloud computing providers. That means talking business solutions, not products, and leveraging the software development prowess of his $15 billion diversified power management company to help solution providers cross the cloud computing chasm.

About one-third of the Eaton’s power quality business unit’s R&D budget is made up of software development, said Tardy. “When you talk about power you still need to invest in developing new technologies for UPS and PDUs, but in the end what makes the difference, what sells, is software,” he said. “So we have a top-notch offering when it comes to UPSes to PDUs, but as I keep on telling my salespeople -- don’t go to transformative VARs and talk to them about product. They could care less about products. What they want to hear is what are you providing to help me [and my customers] solve their business issues.”

Solving business issues. It’s something far too few channel strategists are concerned about in an age that demands new thinking from solution providers, vendor partners and customers.

BACKTALK: Do you see some doors opening due to Eaton’s upcoming cloud computing tools? Contact Steve Burke at [email protected].