Vertiv, formerly Emerson Network Power, all set to grow in key sectors in Malaysia

• Eyes telecommunications, banking, manufacturing and transportation sectors for growth
• Believes hybrid cloud to be the new normal for enterprises moving forward

^{From left: Anand Sanghi (president of Asia market operations), Hitesh Prajapati (country manager of Vertiv Malaysia), Paul Churchill (VP of sales in SEA) and Ling Chee Hoe (VP products and solutions in Asia).}

FRESH from a rebranding exercise, Vertiv, formerly known as Emerson Network Power, is all set to grow its market share in Malaysia this year, as it focuses on some of the key sectors in the country.

The company, which was once a business unit of the Emerson Group (it still owns minority stake in Vertiv), is now an independent entity. As an independent company, it is able to operate with greater freedom in terms of deciding on business strategies and investment decisions. 

"With the launch of Vertiv, we are now able to operate with greater speed and agility, while building on a strong foundation of industry-leading brands, solutions and a global footprint.

"In Malaysia, we continue to see stronger demand from industry verticals such as telecommunications, manufacturing, healthcare and education sectors along with the consistent initiatives by the government agencies on e-governance and digitalisation," said Vertiv Malaysia country manager Hitesh Prajapati when contacted by Digital News Asia recently.

Vertiv designs, builds and services critical infrastructure to power vital applications for data centres, communication networks, and commercial and industrial facilities.  

The company is also targeting the banking sector -- as lenders are undergoing digital transformation.

"As a crucial enabler of that ecosystem, we design, build and help manage critical infrastructure which is essential for the IT and automation to work all the time. Banking industry is also undergoing digital transformation and pushing more applications on customer's fingertips. This and similar applications in other consumer focused businesses will push more computing and storage towards the edges of the network," he said.

"We have pioneered converged solutions that combine power, thermal and infrastructure management solutions into easy to design and deploy modules starting from a single Smart Cabinet to medium sized data centres."

Strong demand from telecommunications sector

Vertiv sees strong demand for its services from the telecommunications industry, as the telecommunications companies are aggressively increasingly their bandwidth and coverage on fixed-line broadband and mobile networks.

"Given the exponential growth expected in data generation, transmission and processing, we foresee telecommunications providers to invest on more robust and reliable infrastructure not just in their networks, but also their data centres.

"We are in the right position to enable the customers and technology providers in this industry with our unmatched understanding of their applications and infrastructure needs," he said.

Another potential growth area would be the transportation and manufacturing sectors.
"We see the government and private sectors putting in high cost investments to improve infrastructure such as rail and transportation systems in Malaysia, and our innovative solutions can help to reduce that cost by raising the efficiency of those systems," he said. . 

According to the Department of Statistics in Malaysia, the manufacturing sector contributed RM626 billion in 2015 and will continue to be a key economic driver in Malaysia. 

"We see this as a potential growth driver for Vertiv’s Malaysia operations in the years ahead," said Hitesh.

Hybrid cloud a new common?

Hitesh added that Hybrid cloud has the potential to become a norm for most enterprises. 

According to IDC, 45% of ICT spend by enterprises in 2018 will be a mix of co-location, hosted cloud and public cloud data centres. 

"The reality of these existing and emerging cloud trends is that enterprises are looking to bring applications online faster and cheaper. The challenge, though, is making sure that all computing resources are being utilized. 

"Recently, Stanford’s Jonathan Koomey and Anthesis Group’s Jon Taylor found that enterprise data centre servers still only deliver, on average, between 5 and 15 percent of their maximum computing output over the course of a year. Additionally, the same study found that 30 percent of physical servers are “comatose,” meaning they have not delivered computing services in six months or more," he said. 

With that in mind, Hitesh reminded that it is vital for organizations to identify these so-called zombie servers which can affect data centre productivity and can even be a security risk. 

"The key is to have a smart power distribution system working in concert with an IT asset management DCIM monitoring that is controlling the PDU at the individual socket level. This is where DCIM is vital in a cloud strategy. DCIM is the zombie slayer, helping identify these comatose or zombie servers, saving up valuable space, power and other critical IT assets in the process," he said.