5. Power Vendors Push Software And Services
Data center power leaders APC by Schneider Electric and Eaton flexed their software and services muscles in 2018, launching technologies to help solution providers generate new recurring revenue. As greater demand for edge computing and the Internet of Things services heats up, power management providers branched out with Software-as-a-Service platforms around life-cycle management for customer data center and distributed environments. Eaton focused on provider power management as-a-service, while APC by Schneider Electric jumped into the hyper-converged infrastructure market through a partnership with Scale Computing to deliver a new "micro data center in a box". This year was a breakout one for innovation from data center power vendors whose R&D is focused on driving new software capabilities and creating more cloud-based versions of legacy product lines.
