ABB has signed a strategic alliance with Ericsson to provide an end-to-end automation platform that optimizes physical and virtual resources for data centers and cloud operators.

By bringing together the Ericsson Cloud System and ABB’s Decathlon® data center infrastructure management (DCIM) system, customers of Ericsson’s cloud services will gain industrial-grade controls and tools to manage and automate a flexible array of power, cooling and IT systems, according to the parties. The new platform will be standardized and designed for ease of use, efficiency, and sustainability.

“As the data center market matures, owners and operators are starting to demand the same control and automation capabilities common to other complex, mission-critical environments,” said Peter Terwiesch, president of ABB’s Process Automation division. “Our alliance with Ericsson extends the automation of physical, mechanical, and electrical infrastructure right to the heart of IT workload management. It will provide the technology for data center and cloud operators to optimize IT workloads, saving operating costs while improving reliability and the performance of their data centers.”

In a highly competitive environment, operators of data centers are increasingly seeking new operational efficiencies as the management of data centers, their IT systems, and facilities — once separate activities — increasingly converge into more holistic operation. The companies say that this ABB-Ericsson alliance will help to achieve these efficiencies by reducing the need for capital expenditure; enabling more rapid time-to-deployment of infrastructure resources; and lowering energy and maintenance costs through better infrastructure management.

Cloud networking has developed rapidly over the past several years and is expected to reach a market size of $30.5 billion by 2018, which translates into a compound annual growth rate of 29%, according to 451 Research. The cloud is widely accepted as a means of achieving faster data delivery, improved application performance, and increased operational efficiencies for mission-critical workloads.