Demand for cloud computing components is rising in the region as businesses move to IT and increase the reliance of business processes on IT. This has seen more data centers being planned with a few already up and running, the biggest being Equity’s Bank Data center which has 77 racks with capacity for another 50 - 70.  As data centers continue to emerge, equipment vendors and suppliers are setting themselves for a profitable epoch.  APC on Thursday evening hosted potential clients at a brief seminar at the Hotel Intercontinental. In the seminar, APC highlighted some of their products including those for small, medium and large data centers. Meanwhile, APC is also defending its lead in the home and small business networks. Some of the measures that APC has taken include investment in a swap center predominantly for single phase products. This will result in reduced delays in replacement for parts taken to APC warranty centers.

Arlene Nazareth, Territory Account Manager for APC East Africa said electrical distribution makes up for APC’s main business segment with automation and control, plus critical power and cooling being the other segment.
APC made revenue of $ 3.6 Billion in 2008 contributing to Schneider Electric’s $24 Billion revenue for the same year. Schneider Electric bought out APC in 2007 and spun out the single phase business which was then bought by Eaton, their main competitor. Schneider Electric had earlier bought out MGE in 2003 which is now maintained as one of their brands.
APC offers three distinct choices where consumers choose between price, value or performance. APC has also designed its products in a manner that they can easily be scaled. The Smart UPS range targets those who are price conscious and can be scaled from 10 kVA. The Galaxy range has scalable sets between 40 - 800 kVA. The Galaxy range also connects to various interfaces including USB, serial, network and industrial interfaces.
The Symmetra PX targets data centres and is very suitable for those that are looking to scale as they grow. The Symmetra combines racks and power and are designed to occupy the least space in a data center.
Some of the factors that may drive firms towards the acquisition of the Symmetra PX ranges include rapid changes in IT technology that makes blade servers suitable. The blade servers can then be placed in the racks. A data center can start with a few servers, power and cooling equipment and scale up as it determines its demands.
Other concerns include businesses conscious of their energy and service costs. The use of multicore CPUs and virtualization of servers has led to servers been more heavily utilised than before. This means that servers are now using more power and dissipating more heat than before.
Architectural design of APCs hardware is standardised and modular making upgrade and switching of the equipment easier. Management of the servers is real time and down to rack level and can be done remotely. Cooling solutions, APC vary from rack cooling, row cooling using chilled water & air and room cooling using chilled water.
Some of the management features include the ability to specify hotspots within data centres and management of the same through in-rack cooling. Data center administrators are also able to use the utilities which predict where to install the next server.