Schneider Electric is continuing its investment in edge computing by collaborating with NetApp on a new solution for NetApp’s hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platform. The new solution, dubbed Optimized Edge for NetApp HCI, combines edge computing infrastructure with an open and scalable on-premise hybrid cloud infrastructure. 

Designer for enterprise, remote/brand offices and small-to-medium sized business spaces, Optimized Edge for NetApp HCI is a compatible physical infrastructure solution that is integrated, pre-engineered, and pre-validated to help organisations of all sizes reduce deployment time, accelerate time to market, and minimise on-site and remote management.

Schneider Electric says that the solution offers enterprise-scale hybrid cloud capabilities that go beyond first-generation HCI limitations to help businesses transform their data centres and empower them to drive efficiencies while reducing operating costs. 

The Optimized Edge for NetApp HCI solution allows customers to optimise and run multiple applications with guaranteed on-premise performance and independent scaling of both compute and storage resources. With Optimized Edge for NetApp HCI, customers can access data from any public, private, or hybrid cloud and streamline data management between on-premise and cloud storage. 

“As enterprises transform to meet the needs of today’s digitally-driven world, they need the compute infrastructure necessary to support IoT applications with improved bandwidth, lower latency, and peak performance,” said Jim Simonelli, senior vice president, Emerging Businesses, Secure Power Division, Schneider Electric. 

“Together, Schneider Electric and NetApp are innovating the traditional approach to hybrid cloud infrastructure to help businesses drive operational efficiencies, reduce costs, and improve efficiency across the enterprise.” 

Additional benefits include: 

• Flexibility to serve as a solution for any business, from enterprises to small businesses and remote offices, with efficient deployment of a complete, pretested, highly optimized, energy-efficient IT solution. It works at any scale to help reduce deployment time and accelerate time-to-market. 
• Simplicity delivered with vendor-neutral visibility and data-driven insights across devices. Optimized Edge for NetApp HCI is an enterprise-scale, hyper converged infrastructure that increases business agility by delivering predictable performance and simplified operations on a flexible and efficient cloud architecture. 
• Differentiation is delivered with expert service and remote monitoring and troubleshooting support. Optimized Edge for NetApp HCI differs from existing market definitions and is architected with independent compute, storage, and networking, allowing customers to scale based on their disaggregated end-user business demands rather than architectural limitations. In addition, the solution’s efficient storage architecture is built from the ground-up to prevent data locality issues, stranding of resources, and management overhead while providing industry-leading guaranteed performance, data duplication, and data compression. 

“Customers today need capabilities that will simplify infrastructure management and accelerate applications at the edge to unlock the value of their data and provide hybrid, multi-cloud solutions that drive efficiencies and reduce cost,” added Brett Roscoe, vice president, Product Management, Cloud Infrastructure business unit, NetApp. 

“NetApp and Schneider Electric are bringing together our technology expertise to deliver optimized edge solutions that go beyond traditional hybrid cloud offerings to empower businesses to achieve new competitive advantages.”