Eaton, an intelligent power management company dedicated to improving the quality of life and protecting the environment for people everywhere. It provides sustainable electrical, mechanical, e-mobility and vehicle electrical components products and solutions. TimesTech interacted with Mr. Debasish Banerji, Director, Sales and Service, Eaton Electrical Sector, India to know about cybersecurity in operational technology, tech innovation in UPS system and much more.
Read the full interview here:
TimesTech: Tell us about Eaton and its major offerings.
Debasish: Eaton is an intelligent power management company dedicated to improving the quality of life and protecting the environment for people everywhere. We are guided by our commitment to do business right, to operate sustainably and to help our customers manage power ─ today and well into the future. By capitalizing on the global growth trends of electrification and digitalization, we’re accelerating the planet’s transition to renewable energy, helping to solve the world’s most urgent power management challenges, and doing what’s best for our stakeholders and all of society.
Founded in 1911, Eaton has been listed on the NYSE for nearly a century. We reported revenues of $19.6 billion in 2021 and serve customers in more than 170 countries.
Eaton Power Quality Private Limited, India is a 100% subsidiary and a part of the electrical sector of Eaton Corporation. We are catering to every industrial segment with versatile solutions which include Switchgear: LV & MV Solutions, Fusegear: LV & MV solutions, UPSs, and software solutions.
TimesTech: Why are cyber security services needed for operational technology and how is Eaton helping to keep operations and personnel safe?
Debasish: Eaton is dedicated to providing comprehensive cybersecurity services for operational technology (OT) to help keep your operations and personnel safe. Eaton has designed hardware and software products for decades, along with providing the associated installation and maintenance services positions. Eaton is the most capable cybersecurity provider in the industry for electrical infrastructure and building systems. Our experienced team of cybersecurity leaders identify and address gaps in your processes based on IEC-62443 standards, provide consultation on enhancement of the OT security posture and provide personnel training programs to minimize your overall attack surface. This also includes the creation of security roles within OT environments for cyber security vulnerability management, and threat detection and response mechanisms.
Customers rely on Eaton to understand, dissect and alleviate cybersecurity risks. It starts with dedicated people. Our team members meet and exceed competencies recognized by international standards organizations through rigorous, in-depth technical training programs. You can be confident that our management and engineering personnel have the knowledge and service capabilities to address advanced cyber threats.
Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (Cybersecurity COE) is a foundational element in the lifecycle of our products and services. Cybersecurity is at the core of our “secure by design” philosophy, and it’s embedded in all the Intelligent Power products and platforms we bring to market. The Cybersecurity COE team aligns our talented people with best practice processes and modern technologies, creating a program that trains others and helps our customers avoid the dangers of cyber-attacks. Eaton has the first research and testing facility approved to participate in UL’s Data Acceptance Program (DAP) for cybersecurity in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Recently, UL approved a second Eaton lab to join the program — another industry first — in Pune, India. These accredited lab environments provide the global capability to test Eaton products with intelligence or embedded logic to key aspects of the UL 2900-1 standard.
TimesTech: What measures has Eaton taken to promote stability in data center power backup?
Debasish: It is worth mentioning just how disruptive the COVID-19 outbreak has been for data centers. Most businesses assume that natural disasters are specific, localized events that will have at worst, impacts on the regional level. What the coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated, however, is that some risks have the potential to be truly global. Data centers around the world have been forced to adjust their operational procedures on the fly to maintain consistent operational uptime while also meeting the demands of social distancing requirements. Remote monitoring technologies like DCIM and automated systems have helped businesses to deal with the crisis better.
Safety is important, for not only data and equipment, but also workers. Eaton engineers provide diagnostic arc flash studies, retrofit programs, and employee training to assess guidelines, reduce fault current and duration, place people away from faults and prevent faults through predictive diagnostic tools and monitoring equipment.
Eaton data center solutions include Eaton UPS products, enclosures, power distribution, advanced power management, and reliability techniques, and world-class services.
We can help build a power system that delivers the reliable, high-quality power a data center needs. We help enterprises find competitive advantages by seeing every power system as a strategic asset to be measured and managed in an integrated way throughout its life cycle. Taking a broader view of a power system as wholly integrated leads to powerful results: greater reliability, operating cost efficiencies, effective use of capital, enhanced safety, and risk mitigation.
TimesTech: Tell us about the various technological innovations that Eaton has made in UPS systems.
Debasish: We will be introducing new UPS & Power distribution products with the latest technologies which would improve efficiencies, reliability, and modularity further. We will also be introducing digital solutions in the form of software suites and other digital services for our customers which would help them to monitor and manage their assets and sites remotely. There is also a large focus to transform the capabilities of our employees and channel partners to embrace the new technology and social normal.
TimesTech: What are Eaton’s future projections going forward?
Debasish: Eaton is in the middle of a massive transformation that will see us emerge as an intelligent power management company. In this regard, we have also made a few large strategic acquisitions recently. Our focus is primarily on Energy Transition (a shift from energy consumers to energy prosumers), e-mobility solutions, and Digitalization.
Eaton is working on the renewable Industry under “Energy Transition and Digitalization “and has been contributing by its wide range of fuses and switchgear. We hope the push of another 127 GW in 2022 and beyond many more years would bring visibility for new products which are not being procured today as the ratings and sizes of the Renewables power plants are increasing many folds.
“Edge computing” has emerged as the latest IT deployment model driven by the growing number of ‘Work from Home’ users, and adoption of IoT use cases. Edge computing reduces latency and increases fault tolerance, however IT managers often under-estimate the difficulty in maintaining uptime of a large number of Edge sites. Eaton Brightlayer Datacenter suite enables the IT department to smoothly transition from being an expert in managing few large Enterprise datacentres to also being an expert in managing large number of smaller Edge sites.
With Eaton’s Brightlayer Data Centers suite, data center managers fix issues as they happen—or prevent them entirely. Eaton’s software applications include everything from data center infrastructure management (DCIM) with capacity analytics and 3D visualizations to advanced, automatic remediations and cloud-based analytics that help predict power component failure.
