NER Announces Partnership with Performance Tuning Corporation

Terms of agreement include formation of DCIM Solutions, LLC and sale of NER’s Data Center Solutions Division

NER is pleased to announce a partnership with Performance Tuning Corporation (PTC) to form DCIM Solutions, LLC. Terms of the partnership include the acquisition of NER’s Data Center Solutions Division by DCIM Solutions, LLC. The newly formed LLC will operate independently of NER and PTC, but customers and partners will benefit from the synergies created through leveraging core competencies of each company.

The partnership provides the necessary working capital for DCIM Solutions, LLC to continue solution development as an increasing number of businesses seek new and better ways to maximum efficiencies and lower overall data center operating costs. Additionally, customers and partners will have access to expanded service support, sales assistance, and market leading technology offerings.

 “For some time I have felt that NER’s Data Center Solutions business would benefit from additional working capital to support growth requirements while fulfilling commitments to our partners. To help facilitate the process, NER Data Corporation was advised by martinwolf M&A Advisors, a boutique investment bank based in the San Francisco Bay Area,” said Stephen Oatway, NER’s President and General Manager of DCIM Solutions, LLC.  “I am excited about this new phase and the possibility for cross-pollination of sales in channels made available through this partnership.”

Dan McDougal, Managing Partner PTC and DCIM Solutions, LLC states, “In addition to NER’s impressive channel and vendor partners, we believe that NER’s innovative approach to data center power, space, and cooling issues through its Assessment Services, Aurora Intelligent Monitoring Strips, and New Containment Solutions represent a winning formula for customer success. Paired with the core infrastructure expertise of PTC the value to customers will be exponential.”  

DCIM Solutions, LLC will operate out of Glassboro, NJ and will be managed by key members of the existing NER Data Center Solutions team. Sales and Purchase Order commitments after June 27 have been transferred to DCIM Solutions, LLC.  Partners and customers will receive detailed information about working with DCIM Solutions, LLC and new offerings in the coming days.  

Stop Johnny

Did you catch the recent McDonald's McCafé Iced Coffee commercial? "Johnny" prints out a huge stack of pages that repeats the line "All work an no French Vanilla makes Johnny a dull boy."

Watch wasteful Johnny  

One way to avoid this wasteful printing is to buy Johnny an iced coffee...but Johnny probably has other issues that kept him from getting a coffee in the first place. A better option is to have document management capabilities as part of your overall Manged Print Services (MPS) solution. 

NER offers PretonSaver™, a print management software application focused on providing detailed print usage data for optimizing toner and paper consumption and controlling printing activity. PretonSaver gathers a robust set of user focused reporting data from all network and locally connected printers and includes extensive print policy enforcement capabilities for reducing toner and consumption.

Report Your Total Print Activity
An important step to controlling your print costs is to understand who is printing, how much they are printing and what they are printing across all devices. Through a complete view of user printing habits as well as device printing data, you can manage both user behaviors as well as device utilization. 

Proactively Manage Print Costs
Once you understand your print costs and issues, you can proactively drive down costs. 

• Report print overuse/abuse to departmental managers
• Educate employees on proper printing policies
• Advise users of issues and let them know that printing, like other cost items, is being tracked
• Force print rules by user, user group, device, device family or application including:
  - Forced Monochrome printing
  - Forced Duplex Printing
• Limit who can print from certain applications, such as browsers, or who can print color
• Set color or total print quota’s for users or groups and require users to request more pages once limits have been set

With the proper document management solution, you can measure your complete print costs and take action to drive your costs down, freeing up funding for more business critical areas.

Title 24 impacts Data Center and Computer Room/IDF Cooling Requirements

Measures likely to spread across the country

New California Energy Codes will have broad impacts on Computer Room cooling design and retrofitting that requires permitting. The definition of “Computer Room” may surprise you because it is not just the large Data Centers that will be affected. 

Adaptations of the California codes are likely to spread across the country so you should become familiar with the requirements and how they may affect and/or improve your operation efficiency.  At a minimum, these could be viewed as “Best Practices” for efficient Data Center and Computer Room Operation.

At the highest level the new codes include:

•       Prescriptive requirements for data room cooling

•       Requirement of economizers

•       Prevention of reheating

•       Prohibition of non-adiabatic dehumidification

•       Requirements for fan power & control (VFD’s)

•       Requirements containment

According to California Operators – SCE, California’s Title 24 changes are scheduled to go into effect July 1, 2014, however there have been rumors it could be delayed again due to software issues (they were originally slated for enactment on January 1, 2013). The new requirements are not retroactive, but any plans that seek incentives/rebates for VFDs, containment projects, and/or other cooling optimization need to be submitted and pre-approved by the end of June. We encourage you to talk directly with your Power/Utility account representative and/or Wildan Energy (option for SCE clients) to ensure you understand how these changes may affect your organization.

Express Incentives, Calculated Incentives, and Savings By Design  Incentives/Rebates (New Build only) still exist from SCE and most utilities. NER can help you qualify for these funds to improve and upgrade your Data Center cooling infrastructure.

To receive a copy of the SCE presentation, the complete California Building Energy Efficiency Standards document, and/or an overview page of the Title 24 Data Center/Computer Room Impacts contact Greg Stover at gstover@nerdata.com / 949-360-1509.

Since this is a Cooling/Thermal Management focused initiative it is a good time to remember that you can’t manage what you can’t see. NER’s new Aurora Thermal Management Technology provides the visibility, data, and management capabilities you require. Learn more at www.nerdata.com/aurora

NER and our partners (Emerson/Liebert, Polargy, Geist/Opengate) provide the most comprehensive cooling offering for optimizing your Data Center/Computer Room. In addition, our advanced Thermal Management and Assessment Services will identify the root cause of your cooling challenges and map out the best path forward.

Thanks for Making Data Center World Expo a Success!

We truly appreciate those who stopped by and took the time learn about NER's Infrastructure Optimization Solutions at the Data Center World Expo.

This year’s event featured the much talked about Aurora High Resolution Temperature Sensing System. Aurora revolutionizes how facilities view temperature. Central to the system is a strip with eight sensors spaced vertically eight inches apart that collect temperature readings at eight different height levels. The readings are visually displayed on the strip through high resolution LEDs that range from cool (blue) to hot (red) and a blend of 129 colors in between. Data from these readings are sent to the Management System through a gateway for trending, alerting, and DCiM/BMS integration. 

We know that your time at the show was limited, so feel free to contact us with any questions you may have -- TSSupport@nerdata.com or 888.637.3282 x561. 

Happy Earth Day!

First celebrated in 1970, Earth Day brings support and awareness for environmental protection by encouraging us to make green choices both at home and at work. Many of us do our part at home, and in recent years more and more businesses have made strides to become more sustainable.

NER as an organization is committed to building sustainable IT enterprises. Our managed print services and data center infrastructure optimization solutions offer ways to improve efficiencies, reduce costs, and build greener organizations.

Print4™ Managed Print Solutions

Printing is an organizational necessity, and the amount of printing still seems to increase annually. This increase in print not only affects your bottom line, but also increases your carbon footprint. Printing requires the use of power, paper, plastics (oil), and components that are not biodegradable, so inefficiencies in office printing can have cascading effects on the environment and your budget.

Employing the Print4™ MPS Solution can provide your organization not only the means to reduce print costs, but can also reduce your organization’s carbon footprint:

• Use parts and consumables that are environmentally responsible
• Realize power savings through proper printer rationalization and use of ENERGY STAR® rated devices
• Reduce carbon footprint through fewer service trips and parts shipments due to properly maintained printers
• Properly use devices - electronic faxing, duplex printing, power save modes
• Benefit from Automated Inventory Management that automatically creates electronic toner orders resulting in fewer cartridges wasted, less toner wasted, and less paper used to create individual orders
• Properly recycle decommissioned devices

Data Center Infrastructure Optimization

Data Centers consume significant amount of electricity -- some estimate that the IT ecosystem accounts for 10% of the world’s electricity generation. A significant portion of this electricity usage goes to data center cooling. Cooling Optimization is one area where businesses can significantly reduce costs and reduce their carbon footprint.

In simple terms Cooling Optimization involves:

• Delivering cold air resource where it needs to be, when it needs to be there, in just the right amount
• Removing heat before it can mix and/or cause hot spots

Mechanisms to realize cooling efficiency include:

• Reducing or eliminating oversupply
• Reducing fan energy (turning off units or using VFD’s)
• Safely raising supply air temperatures
• Safely raising chilled water temperatures (if applicable)
• Optimizing compressor performance (if applicable)
• Increasing economization utilization/hours (if applicable)

Cooling Optimization is a process, and done properly will reduce operating costs and improve sustainability. You can achieve your goals by leveraging the broadest capabilities in the industry; spanning spot cooling remediation, passive & intelligent containment, and high density cooling solutions. In addition, our Consulting and Assessment expertise will help you benchmark,plan, model, and visualize for the future.

Changes to improve your environmental impact do not have drastic; small changes can make a large difference. Contact us today for advice on your specific Green Initiatives and we will help you find ways to make it Earth Day everyday -- 888.637.3282 or admin@nerdata.com. Visit our website at www.nerdata.com

NER and Print4 Not Affected by Heartbleed Vulnerability

After a thorough review, we are pleased to report that NER's internal systems and our Print4 MPS Systems have not been affected by the OpenSSL "Heartbleed" Bug ( CVE-2014-0160).The US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) identified Heartbleed as a serious security flaw in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library. This weakness allows stealing of information protected, under normal conditions, by the SSL/TLS encryption used to secure the Internet.

Upon learning about Heartbleed, we promptly and diligently conducted a full audit of our risks. No vulnerabilities were detected. Protection against Heartbleed comes from our specific architecture which employs multiple levels of encryption and authentication of all data packets.

We take security very seriously because leading businesses depend on NER’s managed services to maintain many of their critical assets. All NER platforms are continually monitored by our internal security resources and independently scanned by leading third party security organizations for PCI compliance and application security.

Feel confident about the managed services supporting your business and learn why NER’s Print4 MPS solution was selected as a Top 10 by CIO Review Magazine. 

NER Data Corporation Chosen a Top 10 Enterprise Print Management Solution Provider

We are proud to announce that NER has been named one of the “Top 10 Most Promising Enterprise Print Management Solution Providers” by CIO Review magazine.

According to CIO Review, “In the last few months we have looked at hundreds of solution providers who primarily serve the Enterprise Print Management sector, and shortlisted the ones that are at the forefront of tackling challenges faced by this sector. In our selection we have looked at the vendors’ skills and capabilities towards various print management solutions and technologies that support core business processes including innovation areas related to cloud, mobile, Saas, PaaS and ERP, Big Data and analytics, mobility, and social media in the specific context of the Enterprise Print Management sector.”

This recognition helps validate our on-going strategy of providing the most flexible end-to-end MPS offering on the market. By leveraging more than four decades of experience in the printing/imaging industry, we developed our Print4™ MPS solution from the ground up as a holistic platform that provides significant device management and document workflow efficiencies. MPS solutions like Print4 play a pivotal role in enabling customers to realize cash flow improvements and cost savings within their output environments. To maximize these benefits, resellers and their end-user clients can easily customize Print4 to match their business processes resulting in a powerful MPS program that works for them—not the other way around.

Print4 MPS offers over 20 different MPS programs, a cloud-based document technology suite, predictive analytics for supplies with automated fulfillment, a comprehensive support structure, and a world-class printer service business. The CIO Review article can be found at www.nerdata.com/news.htm