Frost & Sullivan Lauds Cannon Technologies for its Pioneering Network Server Rack Design

LONDON, Sept. 28, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Based on its recent research on the cabinets market, Frost & Sullivan presents Cannon Technologies with the 2012 European Frost & Sullivan New Product Innovation Award for its novel Smart Space cabinet that is expected to overshadow most cabinets in the market.

The network rack market is highly competitive with additional challenges in terms of competition from Asian imports, demanding customer needs, and the design of the rack itself. Cannon's revolutionary product has been designed specifically to suit the customer needs with added security, planning advantage, cost advantage, easier data centre management, much better cable access and improved work practice in the data centre, all of which comes in an integrated solution.

"In today's data centre environment where floor space and energy cost are major factors, the Smart Space cabinet has provided the much awaited solution to save space while offering financial benefits," said Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Gautham Gnanajothi. "With the trend moving toward racks integrated with active components, added security and cooling, Cannon is strongly positioned to garner market share with its product."

One of the innovative elements of Smart Space is that it has sliding panels – full depth or partial – on each side. The panels provide options for cross patching or isolating adjacent racks while always maintaining maximized cooling efficiency. The panels are designed in such a way that they do not allow cold air to be wasted or hot air to be pulled back in. Frost & Sullivan finds that this way, the user is able to achieve around 40 per cent higher cooling efficiency.

This is particularly important as Cisco switches become the default choice for a network switch. The resulting heat densities are higher and need cooling to be increased. A Smart Space cabinet does away with the inconvenient meter-wide racks for Cisco cooling. Instead it utilizes a "plenum kit" that allows the use of spare space in each side of the rack to cool and comply with Cisco needs – without having to change any of the layout. This is the only solution available in the market that eliminates the need for a meter-wide rack.

Cannon's proprietary "RAFt" or Raised Access Floor technology drastically reduces raised floor cost and planning time while speeding up installation and project rollout as well as simplifying access under floors and within aisles. RAFt, thus, removes the need for 2x2 foot floor tile to be put under the rack. Instead, a picture frame is put under the rack, resting on floor pedestals that give a height of 2 inches or 50mm. This means that very deep racks or odd shaped racks can extend to the back and the front over the aisles, without the user having to cut the tiles and put additional pedestals into the floor.

"Since the RAFt bolts to the pedestal head and the cabinet bolts to the RAFt, the cabinet cannot be tipped over, eliminating the need to put tie bars down to the concrete substrate," noted Gnanajothi. "Frost & Sullivan's research shows that the use of a RAFt saves a massive amount of money, lead time and effort in planning a floor. It also provides much better cable access and simplifies underfloor access."

Top cable entry is particularly well designed, Multiple side glands leaves the central panel clear and leaves space for other equipment. For instance, in a Smart Space, a fan tray can be accommodated in the middle and still have masses of cable entry. The quick-change tray slides like a drawer and can accommodate a rack controller or other electronics. This extremely versatile feature is simple, more efficient and does not disturb the cabling.

The Smart Space also has a unique LCD display at the top that allows the user to monitor critical rack performance issues such as A&B Power (Volts, Amps, Kwh), power consumption, temperatures, humidity and security status. The door of the rack is future proof; it is designed in such a way that it can be upgraded from a mechanical lock to an electronic lock or even a biometric lock. The other unique feature with the door is that it does not have any external hinges but opens 180 degrees when the rack is bayed, and 270 degrees at end of row locations, avoiding obstruction of main aisles and cross aisles.

Finally, the Smart Space cabinets also employ a concept called "Free Form Cocooning". In aisle containment, the use of Free Form Cocooning allows the user to remove any existing cabinets or add extra cabinets from a row of cabinets. This can be achieved quickly and easily without disturbing the aisle infrastructure and rack-mounted cable raceways. It also provides the ability to pre-configure cabinets or put alien cabinets such as IBM storage kit or battery kit, allowing the user to change the physical rack mix of the row.

Overall, Cannon's pioneering Smart Space cabinet design provides an excellent ROI for the end user. It also saves a massive amount of work when trying to configure and work with data centres. Based on these factors, Frost & Sullivan is proud to present the 2012 European New Product Innovation Award in cabinets to Cannon.

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has developed an innovative element in a product by leverage leading edge technologies. The award recognizes the value added features/benefits of the product and the increased ROI it offers customers, which in turn increases customer acquisition and overall market penetration potential.

Frost & Sullivan's Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.

About Cannon Technologies

With a 34 year pedigree, Cannon Technologies provides T4 Data Center Solutions around the globe - from building complete data centers as turnkey projects up to TIA 942 Tier 4; to suites of intelligent, environmentally managed racks including cold-aisle cocooning, per-rack access control, video surveillance, intelligent power distribution and UPS.

Tel: +44(0)1425 632600

Email: [email protected]

Web: www.cannontech.co.uk

Twitter: @CannonT4

About Frost & Sullivan

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SOURCE Frost & Sullivan