Expedient Buys into RLE — and Wants More
An RLE Technologies customer since January 2007, Expedient and its affiliates operate a national network of six data centers located in Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh and Richmond. The company boasts thousands of nationwide clients who use Expedient’s secure and redundant data-center facilities to fully manage their networks’ critical applications. Expedient also offers an array of fully managed network hosting services including Managed Backup for disaster recovery (https://www.expedient.com/services/managed-services/disaster-recovery/) and Colocation Hosting (https://www.expedient.com/services/infrastructure-as-a-service/colocation/). Backing up this management functionality is a powerful, extensive, award-winning Ethernet network.
As you might guess, equipment and facility monitoring can be crucial to round-the-clock operations at Expedient’s multiple data centers. According to Ken Hill, Expedient’s vice president of technical operations, equipment and facility monitoring is essential to his company.
“Our customers rely on our organization to provide reliable data-center services at all times,” explains Hill. “It is imperative that we have in-depth visibility of our infrastructure systems and elements to ensure that we detect and resolve problems in a proactive and timely manner.”
What led Expedient to RLE?
Says Hill: “We had experience with several monitoring systems, and the RLE platform was scalable, cost effective and relatively easy to deploy. The functionality surpassed other devices that we evaluated.”
Since making the decision to invest in RLE, Expedient has deployed its products in five of its six data centers: The company has purchased about a dozen Falcon Facilities Monitoring Systems (FMS) and approximately 10 times as many accompanying temperature and humidity sensors. Expedient is also using RLE’s SeaHawk Water Leak Detection system, power-monitoring Branch Circuit Monitors (BCMs), and wireless Temperature Monitoring system, along with a few dozen temperature sensors.Expedient has benefited from its RLE installation in a number of ways. According to Hill, “The RLE product provides us with the ability to monitor and measure power consumption and watts densities within our data centers … the product reduced our cabling costs and gave us flexibility with the placement of sensors. For example, the wireless temperature and humidity sensors can be placed anywhere within the facility in minutes. If we have a specific area of concern, we can install a sensor and collect environmental information immediately.”
Within the past year, Expedient replaced its previous monitoring system with RLE’s Environet, a software application that simplifies management and provides true convergence of IT and facilities monitoring. Expedient has been extremely pleased with this solution. Initially, Expedient merely needed to integrate more temperature monitoring at its sites, but as the company learned more about Environet, its needs and scope began to steadily increase. The company is now considering moving a couple more sites to Environet.
“The RLE product allows us to add modular components to meet our needs as we grow,” Hill says. “Some of the competing products carried a higher initial cost that consumed additional capital resources up front.”
Over time, Expedient’s relationship with RLE has evolved.
“The RLE sales and support staff have been excellent to work with over the past few years,” Hills says. “They have a good understanding of our business, and they have been able to work with us to find technical solutions to meet our needs.”
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