Close
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Menu
Search
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home Latest News
    • Reviews

    Real companies: APC

    By
    Eric Lundquist
    -
    June 2, 2008
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin

      I did a video commentary for eWeek from Newport recently while I was down there attending the annual APC editorial confab. The lead story in the Providence Journal was about $4 gas and accompanying articles were about the rising costs of food and nearly everything else in our petro-based economy.

      The point I made in the commentary was as the U.S. economy suffers from continually rising costs and consumers are worried about their homes, the U.S. high tech companies strike me as particularly out of touch. Do consumers really care if Microsoft buys Yahoo when they are worried about making the mortgage payment. And although I didn’t attend Walt Mossberg’s All Things Digital conference, the news reports and video footage I viewed was mostly about yes, Microsoft becoming a media company, phones of all shapes sizes and networks and a world divorced (in my opinion) from economic and social reality.

      So, I was happy to sit for a morning listening to presentations on data centers, power usage and ways companies can cut their electrical consumption ranging from simple steps to fully instrumented projects. APC, which was acquired in 2006 by Paris-based Schneider Electric, is what I define as a real company. Real companies help you evaluate how your company runs and then tries to sell you some stuff to make your business run more efficiently. There is not a lot of mystery in real companies. No one is trying to figure out how they will ever earn revenues. You don’t have to come up with some mythical ROI formula to justify the investment.

      Say your company spends $250K a year in powering, heating and cooling your IT data center. Changing the rack structure, altering the cool air flow and fidgeting with the temperature might cut that in half. You might have to spend $250k to get that savings. Good idea? Bad idea? Depends on how long you will be at your site, how much you believe in the promises of cloud, hosted computing and are you willing to trade off ongoing service costs for capital investment. Like, I said, no magic just good old fashioned number crunching.

      Let’s hear it for the real companies.

      Avatar
      Eric Lundquist
      Since 1996, Eric Lundquist has been Editor in Chief of eWEEK, which includes domestic, international and online editions. As eWEEK's EIC, Lundquist oversees a staff of nearly 40 editors, reporters and Labs analysts covering product, services and companies in the high-technology community. He is a frequent speaker at industry gatherings and user events and sits on numerous advisory boards. Eric writes the popular weekly column, 'Up Front,' and he is a confidant of eWEEK's Spencer F. Katt gossip columnist.

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Android

      Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro: Durability for Tough...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 5, 2020 0
      Have you ever dropped your phone, winced and felt the pain as it hit the sidewalk? Either the screen splintered like a windshield being...
      Read more
      Cloud

      Why Data Security Will Face Even Harsher...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 1, 2020 0
      Who would know more about details of the hacking process than an actual former career hacker? And who wants to understand all they can...
      Read more
      Cybersecurity

      How Veritas Is Shining a Light Into...

      eWEEK EDITORS - September 25, 2020 0
      Protecting data has always been one of the most important tasks in all of IT, yet as more companies become data companies at the...
      Read more
      Big Data and Analytics

      How NVIDIA A100 Station Brings Data Center...

      Zeus Kerravala - November 18, 2020 0
      There’s little debate that graphics processor unit manufacturer NVIDIA is the de facto standard when it comes to providing silicon to power machine learning...
      Read more
      Apple

      Why iPhone 12 Pro Makes Sense for...

      Wayne Rash - November 26, 2020 0
      If you’ve been watching the Apple commercials for the past three weeks, you already know what the company thinks will happen if you buy...
      Read more
      eWeek


      Contact Us | About | Sitemap

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      Terms of Service | Privacy Notice | Advertise | California - Do Not Sell My Information

      © 2021 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×