2014 Data Center 100: 20 Infrastructure Providers

Infrastructure: The Base On Which Services Are Built

Having the right infrastructure locked down is essential before a data center can be used to provide services customers require.

"Infrastructure" in this case is the servers, storage, and networking gear that allow data center operators--and often their customers--a base on which to run their applications. It also includes the hardware that makes a data center run, including the power supplies, cooling devices, backup power, fire suppression, physical security, and other devices.

It doesn't make any difference if the data center is targeted at a single business's operation or at multi-tenant infrastructures. With the data center hardware, efficiency is just as important as performance.

APC by Schneider Electric
West Kingston, R.I.
President, CEO: Jean-Pascal Tricoire

A leading developer of AC-based and DC-based backup power products and services, APC protects customers from SOHOs to large-scale data centers and facilities. The company has been expanding its prefabricated data center business and early this year acquired AST Modular.

Asetek
Menlo Park, Calif.
CEO: Andre Eriksen

Asetek is one of the companies most active in keeping data centers and servers cool. The company, via OEM and channel partners, has deployed more than 1.5 million liquid cooling units in the field based on its patented all-in-one liquid cooling technology.

Brocade
San Jose, Calif.
CEO: Lloyd Carney

Storage networking leader Brocade recently sold its HBA and CNA business to QLogic to focus on core solutions. Brocade also is one of the few companies that can give Cisco a run for the money in data center Ethernet networking.

Cisco Systems
San Jose, Calif.
CEO: John Chambers

Cisco has built on its vast networking installed base to become a top developer of blade servers, which it has used in partnership with top storage vendors such as EMC, NetApp and others to become a leader in converged infrastructures.

CyberPower Systems
Shakopee, Minn.
President: Michael Ho

A builder of products for protecting IT power in SOHO, SMB and corporate data center environments, CyberPower Systems' lines include UPS, surge protection, power distribution units and network power management.

Dell
Round Rock, Texas
CEO: Michael Dell

Dell has stretched beyond its PC roots to become a major supplier of server, storage, networking, software, HPC server and cloud data center solutions. It went private in 2013 as a way to restructure itself to become an enterprise-focused company.

Eaton
Cleveland
CEO: Alexander Cutler

Eaton is a huge conglomerate with businesses ranging from automotive technology to hydraulics to smart power distribution, but in the data center it is a top provider of power quality, monitoring, and protection hardware and software, including DC power solutions.

EMC
Hopkinton, Mass.
CEO: Joe Tucci

The data center's leading storage vendor, EMC also is a top data center provider of cloud and virtualization technology, enterprise security, and big data and analytics. The company is looking beyond its legacy hardware with a push into software-defined storage.

Emerson Network Power
Columbus, Ohio
CEO: David Farr

A leading supplier of data center power and cooling equipment with its Liebert brand, Emerson provides UPS and DC power systems, performance monitoring solutions and more. The company expanded its surge protection capabilities with the 2013 acquisition of Advanced Protection Technology.

Hewlett-Packard
Palo Alto, Calif.
CEO: Meg Whitman

HP, the company that coined the term ’converged infrastructure,’ has upped its data center game considerably, unleashing a new line of Shark converged systems, staking out a No. 1 position in SDN and adding innovative SaaS offerings such as HP Performance Anywhere/ HP Agile Manager.

Hitachi/HDS
Santa Clara, Calif.
CEO: Jack Domme (HDS)

While Hitachi Data Systems is best known as a provider of high-end traditional and virtualized storage platforms, the company more recently has been moving from its traditional storage-only focus to provide converged infrastructure, flash storage and application-specific storage technologies.

IBM
Armonk, N.Y.
CEO: Ginni Rometty

IBM has been in the data center longer than nearly anyone, but its role is changing fast as it plans to shed its x86-based server business to Lenovo and concentrate on the cloud and on services in the future.

Mellanox
Sunnyvale, Calif.
CEO: Eyal Waldman

Mellanox develops end-to-end connectivity solutions, including InifiniBand adapters and switches as well as 10-Gbit and 40-Gbit Ethernet adapters and gateways, to help optimize data center performance. It was first to release a 40-GbE NIC for the Open Compute Project.

NetApp
Sunnyvale, Calif.
CEO: Tom Georgens

The second-largest independent storage vendor and the largest to offer the same storage operating system across nearly all its product families, NetApp partners with Cisco in developing the FlexPod line of converged server-storage-networking data center solutions.

Riverbed
San Francisco
CEO: Jerry Kennelly

Riverbed specializes in application performance infrastructure to provide what it calls "location-independent computing,’ or a way for users and customers to access data at near-wire speed from anywhere, with technologies to accelerate WAN, storage, networking and applications.

Silver Peak
San Francisco
CEO: David Hughes

Silver Peak develops WAN acceleration hardware and software to reduce the amount of traffic sent across a WAN and deliver information locally to improve backup, replication and recovery between data centers and facilitates. It recently added 256-bit AES encryption.

Stay Online
General manager: Jim Higgins
Creedmoor, N.C.

Stay Online produces the power cords, adapters, power strips, outlets, cable trays, electrical drops, and cables that help connect the data center. The company is unique in that much of its product line is made in its own U.S. facilities.

Stulz
Frederick, Md.
Managing director: Oliver Stulz

Stulz develops cooling solutions and services for mission-critical data center applications, with a full line of indoor and outdoor cooling equipment, humidification and dehumidification equipment, and related services. Its sister company, thermal management product developer Cosmotec, just entered the U.S. market.

Super Micro Computer
San Jose, Calif.
CEO: Charles Liang

Supermicro manufactures rack-mount, pedestal and blade servers; high-end workstations; high-performance computing; and storage appliances based on industry-standard components for data centers. The company is also a key supplier of components for much of the system builder community.

Talari Networks
San Jose, Calif.
CEO: Emerick Woods

The Mercury line of appliances from Talari Networks aggregate and transform diverse, affordable IP bandwidth sources to deliver business-class performance and reliability to enable development of resiliant, high-performance WANs for customers from SOHOs to data centers.