Emerson Network Power has launched the Trellis Process Manager, offering data center managers an automated workflow manager. The new Trellis module creates, tracks, and provides views on data center workflow allowing organizations to improve the execution and efficiency of standard data center processes. Combined with the other modules of the complete Trellis DCIM solution, Trellis Process Manager also allows users to see the impact of proposed changes on the data center, improving costs, and efficiencies by enabling accurate planning.
“Data from our December 2013 Datacenter Survey on DCIM shows that nearly 50 percent of respondents identified human error as a cause of downtime in their organizations,” says Jennifer Koppy, research manager, IDC. “When we looked specifically at large data centers (more than 20,000 square feet), 70 percent identified human error as a cause of downtime. This data suggests that a solution that automates critical data center activities, such as the Trellis Process Manager, is very much needed in the marketplace.”
The Trellis Process Manager enforces a process, including necessary approvals for making changes to the data center infrastructure. It contains four out-of-the-box templates for core data center processes – installing, moving, decommissioning, and renaming devices. Actions within these processes cannot be performed without the correct approvals, and all tasks are automatically assigned and delays escalated to the correct person or team. After tasks are completed, the Trellis Process Manager automatically updates the data center plan. The templates can be customized as needed to reflect the organization’s workflow.In addition to automating processes, the Trellis Process Manager helps managers, planners, and operators to provide cost-based assessment, evaluation, and recommendations to senior management to support budget allocation. According to Emerson Network Power, the workflow tool provides a far more dynamic and accurate approach to assessment, which today is a manual process fraught with difficulty and inaccuracies. Now, data center managers can have increased confidence in the data center’s abilities to support IT/business requirements.
“The Trellis Process Manager adds workflow capabilities to the existing functionality of the Trellis platform, filling a need in the marketplace to remove human error and provide visibility to the effects of certain changes on the data center,” says Steve Hassell, president of Emerson Network Power’s data center solutions business.
To learn more about Emerson Network Power’s DCIM solutions, visit www.EmersonNetworkPower.com/Trellis.