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Though the slowdown did impact the overall business of racks and enclosures vendors, FY 09 saw an increased pitch by them towards educating customers about the benefits of having a unified data center. Energy efficiency was the overall theme for most of the vendors; they were best placed to inform their prospective customers about how racks and enclosures could help in cooling the customers data centers. Technologies like water cooling and perforated racks came to the fore. The year also saw unorganized players consolidating their position.

Key Developments
A typical problem faced by most data centers was that the whole volume of air inside was chilled, and this was considered energy inefficient. It meant wasting electricity for cooling an entire volume of air. To redress this, rack and enclosures manufactures like Rittal, APC and Emerson devised various strategies. Rittal, for example, suggested having a normal temperature of around 30 degrees. This meant hot air going to a heat exchanger where cold air would be blown directly onto the server front. Although servers have fans and they suck the air to the back, this being a closed cycle meant that it was the server which was cooled, and not the entire volume of air inside the data center.

Rittal, one of the largest player in the segment, managed to withstand the slowdown, but growth was impacted somewhat in OND 09. On the server and networking front, Rittal got major orders from Cisco, IBM, ISRO, GM, iGate, ABB, and Times of India. The company also managed to get regular orders from Ericsson for outdoor enclosures. But business from Motorola slowed a little. Rittal, however, experienced the impact of business on its non-IT side, wherein it is also into industrial enclosures business.

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Data centers continued to be the biggest driver for both racks and enclosures in India

Rittal, announced the launch of a new series of products designed for data centersRimatrix5which was positioned as the complete turnkey solution targeted at the data centers. Rittal demonstrated a fully functional green data center in live operation at Mumbai. It launched its offering to its customersan integral complete solution for data centers with comprehensive service and five integrated IT modules: rack, power, cooling, security and monitoring & remote management. The solution includes a raised floor, high-density climate control, water chiller as well as power distribution and back-up. It will be equipped with a fully functioning Lampertz high-availability security room, fitted with the necessary partitions, safety doors, false floors and other features.

Rittal already offers rack and associated cable management. The innovation that this product brought to the market was that the UPS was part of it, and also included a thermal solution based on chilled water system by means of a heat exchanger. Rittal calls this Liquid Cooling Package (LCP). Rittal claimed that on the basis of its energy calculations, enterprises could easily have energy savings of more than 40% as compared to the conventional system. Most players like Rittal and APC pushed this technology during FY 09. Rittal also participated in the LBNL data center cooling energy study which demonstrated energy savings for its products. The company announced the launch of its Xpress program for its networking and IT range of products. Under this program, Xpress program standard products such as networking enclosures, server enclosures, wall mounts, fan and filter units, and a wide range of accessories were offered off the shelf from five regional modification centers located at Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune, Faridabad, and Secunderabad. IT vendors like HP and IBM, though they did not sell racks and enclosures as separate products, did focus on this segment in a big way.

The unorganized sector continued to make its presence felt by using pricing as their predominant weapon. Apart from pricing, being the small scale sector, these players also benefited from the lower excise duties. They also managed to derive the benefits of being local players by saving on sales tax as well. Most of the vendors strategies towards these unorganized players was to take the total solutions approach. Vendors also used the distributors and VARs, and tried to get into long-term contracts with their customers, thereby increasing their geographical reach as well. Rittal identified some distributors and tried to and reach out to customers who otherwise were difficult to reach. This was a careful process from the vendors perspective as this was an area where organized distribution was almost non-existent.

Another leading player, Emerson Network Power, appointed new partners to drive its channel network business in the upcountry markets like Bhillai in Chhattisgarh, Siliguri in West Bengal, Imphal in Manipur and Thimphu in Bhutan. Emerson also revealed its intention to encourage its channel partners in marketing activities by providing them with marketing development funds for promoting their brand. It also announced its plan to double the VAR base. Emersons channel strategy was based on the assumption that the only way to minimize threats was to equip the partners for up-selling. During FY 09, Emerson also focused on network solution partners (NSPs). Emerson intends to continue their engagement programs and focus on increasing their business with network solution partners. The company concluded a four-city partner meet in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru, which was in line with its strategy of creating awareness about Energy Logic. This was aimed at enrolling these partners to increase their presence in the data center market. Emerson also partnered with Sun Microsystems for its new Sun Modular Datacenter Solution, which will leverage Emersons power and cooling technology. This has been designed to house a payload of 19-inch rack-mountable servers, storage, telecommunications, and networking equipment.

CyberMedia Research                                                                                             DQ Estimates

The growth of leading vendors got stymied during slowdown; an extremely fragmented market made it difficult to track most of the vendors. Vendors like APW got into specialized consulting for data center optimization

APC, another leading player in the space, also continued its strategy of going to customers with green in mind. It tried to push its technological innovation of a rack with perforated front and back doors for its NetShelter line of products. The company, over the years, has positioned itself as a leading player which aims at streamlining data centers power and cooling mechanism. Racks and enclosures form an integrated part of APC strategies. The company through its years of R&D, recognized the problem of airflow in rack cabinets and built its products to address the problem. FY 09 saw APC pushing for its solutions to make data centers energy efficient.

APW President Systems, one of the earliest Indian players in the rack and enclosures space, managed to consolidate its position, and the key highlight for this company last year was the conscious decision of moving up the value chain by starting to offer consultancy for data center optimization. It was with this in mind that the company elevated S Venkatraman as vice president in charge of enclosure solutions and technical services. It also got into some of the new areas like telecom, contract manufacturing and SMB segments, apart from foraying into entertainment, healthcare and government segments. The company also expanded its channel partnership program with an eye on addressing larger market segments. APW also appointed APBIL as a national distributor for the FlexiBox range of wall-mount cabinets. It also introduced cable management facility for data centers and expanded its Attibele manufacturing facility.

Some of the smaller players like Valrack, NetRack, 20th Century, Selrack, BCH Electric, Hulasi and others enhanced their presence in the market.

Sudesh Prasad
sudeshp@cybermedia.co.in

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