State of Technology: In Power-Protection Technology Advancement, APC Sizzles

Reliability is by far the most important innovation in the power-protection sector, and no vendor in this market comes close to charging up on West Kingston, R.I.-based American Power Conversion (APC).

The vendor's innovation rating in the quarterly VARBusiness State of Technology survey nearly doubled that of its closest rivals, Tripp Lite and Liebert. Many of APC's product innovations, including automation and centralized management capabilities, were important considerations among solution providers.

As the cost of powering, protecting and cooling the data center increases, APC and its peers focus on reducing the electricity consumption of servers, cooling systems and backup.

While APC was the runaway innovation leader, the ranking of other power- protection vendors was fairly evenly distributed.