Remote Management Makes Eaton´s UPS Systems Truly Uninterruptible
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Businesses such as data centers, banks, hospitals and supermarkets need constant access to power. By implementing an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), these businesses make sure that they always have an immediate back-up if the main power should fail. But how do you make sure that the back-up always is operational without physically visiting it every day? Eaton has found a way by using the Netbiter remote management solution from HMS Industrial Networks. It enables Eaton to access to real-time data about each UPS, to offer a faster service and to reduce travelling.
"Constant control of our UPS systems is crucial to us and we felt that it was time to find one unified solution for remote management throughout the organization," says Fabio Mazzà , EMEA Services Product Manager at Eaton's Power Quality division. "Our service teams in Belgium and Luxemburg had been using Netbiter for some time and when we started comparing the different remote management solutions we had in use at Eaton, Netbiter seemed the most reliable and viable solution."
Eaton's solution
Eaton decided to package the Netbiter solution and offer this to their customers as a service called "Eaton SmartQmmunicator." It works in the following way: A Netbiter gateway is attached to the UPS using Eaton's own proprietary UPS communication protocol. It sends data via Ethernet or GSM/GPRS to the Netbiter Argos data center.
Through the Netbiter Argos web interface, the Eaton service teams and their end customers have web-based access to all UPS parameters. This information gives the service technicians a very good idea what to look for when visiting customer sites.
Bart Van der Goten is Service Manager at Eaton and in charge of about 350 UPS units in Belgium and Luxembourg. "The greatest benefit is that you are in control," he says. "Customers that have a certain Service Level Agreement- let's say we need to be on site within 4 hours if something happens - often want an engineer on site immediately. But since we can log on to Netbiter Argos and start troubleshooting remotely right away, we can solve problems quicker and only go to the site when really needed."
Better control and reduced carbon footprint
"You can really improve the way you manage your service teams," Fabio Mazzà continues. "You get a much better knowledge of your installations and know what to look for beforehand, which is a big help as a service technician. You can also reduce your team's travelling and cut down on CO2 emissions, which is very important to us."
"From my point-of-view as a Service Manager, easy implementation is important," adds Bart Van derGoten. "Since the solution is web-based, no extra software is needed. We can use existing connections to the internet at customers' sites to get real time data, trend analyses, automated reports and alerts via email and SMS."
The SmartQmmunicator is offered as an added service to Eaton customers.
