Data Center Operations Management

Real-time monitoring, IT/OT integration, and operational efficiency.

Modern data centers must ensure business continuity, infrastructure resilience, and energy efficiency in an environment of increasing technological complexity.

Factory Software supports data center operations with AVEVA solutions for real-time monitoring and advanced operational data analytics.

Managing increasingly complex data centers

AI, edge computing, and cloud are accelerating the growth of data centers, increasing power density and operational complexity.

Managing this infrastructure requires a new operating model capable of integrating power infrastructure, cooling systems, and IT platforms into a unified operational view.

An integrated operations approach transforms technical data into actionable insights, improving resilience, efficiency, and operational control over time.

Data center operational challenges

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Uptime and infrastructure resilience

Business continuity as a top priority.

In a data center, an unplanned outage can have significant economic and reputational impacts. As power density and critical loads increase, ensuring infrastructure resilience becomes increasingly complex.

Seemingly isolated events can have ripple effects across electrical systems, cooling, and IT environments, making it more difficult to prevent or contain critical situations.

Ensuring uptime today means managing the interdependencies between increasingly complex systems.

Complexity and siloed systems

Many systems, little integrated visibility.

A modern data center integrates BMS, UPS, power monitoring, HVAC, DCIM, and security platforms. These environments are often implemented at different times and with disparate technologies.

When they operate in isolation, the overall view becomes fragmented. Alarms are not contextualized, root cause analysis takes time, and collaboration between IT and operations teams becomes more difficult.

Complexity is not only technical, but also organizational and decision-related.

Energy, sustainability, and operating costs

Energy efficiency as a strategic lever.

Energy and cooling represent a significant portion of a data center’s operating costs, especially in high-density environments. At the same time, sustainability and environmental impact reduction are becoming priority goals.

Without a clear view of operational performance, it becomes difficult to identify inefficiencies, optimize capacity utilization, or plan future infrastructure evolution.

Energy efficiency and operational performance are closely interconnected.

Scalability and multi-site management

Growing without losing control.

Growing demand, driven by AI, edge computing, and cloud adoption, is leading many operators to rapidly expand their infrastructures or manage data centers across multiple locations.

Each new site introduces technical and organizational variables that increase operational complexity. Without consistent governance, scalability can lead to operational fragmentation.

The real challenge is not just to grow, but to govern growth over time.

Integrated approach to data center operations management

Addressing the operational challenges of modern data centers requires a management model that integrates electrical infrastructure, cooling systems, and IT platforms into a single operational view.

A Data Center Operations Management approach unifies infrastructure monitoring with operational data analytics, turning technical information into actionable decision support.

This model is based on two key elements: real-time monitoring and control of infrastructure and advanced data analytics to improve resilience, energy efficiency, and data center performance.

SCADA and DCIM compared

SCADA and DCIM in the data center: distinct roles, integrated value

In the data center context, it is important to distinguish between:

SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition)

Real-time monitoring
Alarm management
Critical infrastructure control (UPS, PDUs, HVAC, sensors)

DCIM (Data Center Infrastructure Management)

IT asset inventory
Capacity management
Rack, power, and cooling relationships

SCADA keeps the infrastructure operational in real time, while DCIM supports planning and capacity optimization over time.

The real value comes from the integration of SCADA, DCIM, and building automation systems.

Solution

Real-time monitoring and control of infrastructure

To ensure business continuity and resilience, it is critical to have a unified view of the infrastructure that makes up a data center: electrical systems, cooling, security, and IT platforms.

AVEVA Unified Operations Center integrates and monitors these systems within a single operations platform, providing a centralized view of operations and enabling the correlation of events from different sources.

Through operational dashboards and supervisory tools, operators can improve alarm management, coordinate operations teams, and maintain control of infrastructure even across multi-site environments.

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Solution

Data analytics to improve efficiency and resilience

Data centers generate large volumes of data from sensors, monitoring systems, and energy infrastructure. Analyzing this data is essential to identify inefficiencies, improve performance, and anticipate potential anomalies.

AVEVA PI Vision enables real-time visualization and analysis of operational data, helping operators identify anomalous patterns and continuously improve infrastructure performance.

With advanced visualization tools and data analytics, organizations can improve energy efficiency, support predictive maintenance strategies, and make data-driven decisions.

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They say about us:

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"We do this to create more value and enable the business to make better decisions based on data, not on assumptions about what the next best action is, such as installing new racks or monitoring energy use. "

Shawn Tugwell

Senior Data Center Engineering Manager, PayPal

Operational Applications in Data Centers

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IT/OT Convergence

The convergence of IT and operations environments requires an operating model capable of unifying information, events, and processes.

An integrated system enables organizations to:

Contextualize IT events within the physical infrastructure
Enable structured escalation workflows
Track interventions and responsibilities
Reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR)

This improves team collaboration and increases operational transparency.

Energy Optimization

The availability of energy data alone is not sufficient without integrated analysis tools.

Through real-time KPIs and historical analysis, organizations can:

Monitor electrical loads and cooling performance
Compare performance across different sites
Identify inefficiencies
Support capacity planning decisions

Energy optimization thus becomes an integral part of data center operations management, not just a sustainability objective.

Integrated Power and Cooling

In a data center, power supply and HVAC systems are closely interconnected: an event affecting one subsystem can impact other areas of the infrastructure.

Integration between:

UPS / DRUPS
PDUs and rack PDUs
HVAC systems, CRACs, and CRAHs
Environmental sensors

enables alarms to be contextualized and abnormal patterns to be identified before they escalate into operational disruptions.

Integrating power and cooling improves infrastructure resilience and helps prevent downtime.

Multi-site Monitoring

Managing distributed infrastructure requires a unified view that enables centralized monitoring of multiple data centers in real time, while maintaining the ability to analyze each individual facility or area.

An integrated approach enables organizations to:

Aggregate data from BMS, electrical systems, DCIM, and security platforms
Visualize global dashboards with drill-down by site, room, or rack
Standardize KPIs and escalation models
Coordinate teams across multiple sites

This approach reduces operational fragmentation and improves overall infrastructure governance.

AVEVA Software Solutions for Data Centers

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Unified Operation Center

AVEVA Unified Operations Center enables real-time integration and monitoring of data center infrastructure-power, cooling, and IT systems-into a single operations platform. It provides a centralized view of operations to improve visibility, coordination and control of critical infrastructure.

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AVEVA PI Vision

AVEVA PI Vision enables visualization and analysis of data center operational data through interactive dashboards and real-time analytics. It transforms data from sensors and infrastructure systems into useful insights to improve efficiency, performance, and decision-making capabilities.

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Learn how to improve your data center operations

Request a demo of AVEVA solutions for real-time monitoring and operational data analytics in data centers.

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