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Challenges

1. IT/OT integration & secure data collection

• Collecting data from electromechanical systems was not possible through the customer’s existing IT network
• Corporate cybersecurity policies required verified, secure methods for data exchange
• Existing OT protocols were incompatible with required IT standards

2. Supporting long-term data center operations

• Data centers operate 30–40 years; infrastructure, technology, and staff change - but expectations for uptime, efficiency, and sustainability increase every year
• Operators must perform thousands of planned & unplanned activities on interdependent assets with zero downtime tolerance

3. Customer expectations

• Business continuity and regulatory compliance
• Environmental sustainability
• Redundant capacity and fault-tolerant operations
• Predictive and preventive capabilities
• Scalability for future expansion
• Compatibility with existing corporate IT standards

4. Unified platform for IT and facility teams

• Both IT and Facilities teams needed a single platform that supports monitoring → analysis → event playback → capacity management → energy accounting.

The objective of this study was to provide visible, secure, efficient, standardized and centralized power monitoring. At the time of this case study, Otomatica had commissioned and were supporting more than 25 modern data centers, with a combined power demand of over 120 MW IT power. They recognized in ETAP the commitment to be at the forefront of innovation from design tools through operations, with new software offering, expanded equipment catalogs and API integrations.

Traditionally, local building management and power management installations have been located within the OT layers. this partial integration doesn't provide adequate visibility, security, quality and reliability standards. Providing a building management and power management monitoring system at the onset of operation, and at the corporate cloud level to comply with IT standards, is what Otomatica advises to their clients. They were looking for a software solution they could recommend and implement at the onset of a new installation to test the mechanical system, which was capable of moving the simulation dataset from their design stage directly into operations within an IT/OT convergence framework.

The design and execution phase of a data center lifecycle is one to two years, but operations of these complex facilities may reach 30 to 40 years.

Keeping this in mind, there is critical expectations by data center owners to meet growing demands with minimal downtime during the operations stage. During operation, data center operators must perform thousands of planned and unplanned activities on hundreds of different capacities of equipment which are all dependent on one another. As well, the technology and personnel is constantly changing but the expectations for zero downtime remans. And new demands for energy efficiency and sustainable operations requirements are growing. These operators can benefit greatly by having software tools that help the data center be fault-tolerant. It helps them to predict and prevent events, scale their operations accordingly, and maintain certifications.

Selected applications

• ETAP Digital Twin - data modeling (classification, labeling and validation) and simulation
• ETAP Power Modeling and Simulation System (PSMS) - analytical tools to detection of system behavior in response to operator actions and events via the use of real-time and archived data to determine the appropriate system response to a variety of changes and disturbances by using electrical and physical parameters, loading and generation levels, network topology, and control logics. In addition, the solution can determine the source of potential problems and advise on corrective actions to avoid interruptions.
• ETAP REST API - secure IT-layer deployment

Main customer benefits

1. Fully integrated IT/OT power management

• ETAP operated entirely inside the customer’s corporate cloud environment with full security compliance, virtualization compatibility, and IT-level redundancy
• Data became accessible from any authorized device, improving responsiveness and decision quality

2. Enterprise-grade data management

• Standardized asset modeling, labeling, classification, validation enabled accurate big-data processing
• Unified energy accounting integrated with the customer’s ERP system
• Certified reporting and audit-ready data supported internal governance and performance monitoring

3. Enhanced operational reliability

• Operators gained real-time visibility of breaker states, topology changes, equipment deviations, and sensor derivatives
• Event playback enabled root-cause analysis of atmospheric disturbances, incoming mains failures, equipment faults, and unbalanced loads
• Automatic detection of rack-level unbalances improved uptime and operational safety

4. Predictive maintenance & advanced analytics

• Through IT-layer integration, OT managers accessed AI-Ops tools, ERP insights, and predictive maintenance engines, improving efficiency and reducing operational risk

5. Scalable architecture for multi-decade operations

• The 4-layer architecture—OT → Automation → IT → Enterprise—provides long-term flexibility, modular expansion, and future service integration

6. Improved human resource efficiency

• Shared workflows between IT and OT teams reduced operational overhead and enabled faster, more accurate decisions

Conclusion

By integrating ETAP into a secure corporate IT environment, Otomatica was able to successfully fulfill the expectations of their data center customer through a fully digitalized electromechanical infrastructure. They achieved full IT/OT convergence - standardizing electrical operations, improving reliability, and enabling advanced analytics and event management across mission-critical infrastructure.

Customer perspective