POWERING THE ENTERPRISE

The growing importance of power backup in enterprises will ensure
double-digit growth for UPS vendors

In the recent times, contrary to its name, the peripheral devices like UPS
are getting mainstream attention. If an organization intends to make its
computing resources available on a 24/7 format, there are a host of back-end
infrastructure ena-blers that makes it possible. In that line, how critical are
the power back up devices? The answer would be a big 'very.' And, in a
country like India, where power blackouts are common, the UPS devices play a
crucial role. From just a backup device, UPS has come a long way.

Unlike other peripheral devices like printers or monitors, which only have
branded players, the UPS industry is very typical of the PC market, with
hundreds of players across the country dominating this space. Here, both
organized and unorgani-zed players offer a plethora of products.

Industry Dynamics

The UPS industry in India is highly fragmented-it con-sists of many
unorganized players at the lower end and organized players at the higher end of
the segment.  According to MAIT, the UPS market size touched Rs 1,400
crores in 2004. Of this 1,400-crore market, the sub-5 KVA segment-which
comprises home users, SOHO and SMB users-constituted Rs 745 crores. The
enterprise seg-ment accounted for the bala-nce Rs 650 crore.

The industry experts broa-dly classify the market into three segments. Micro
UPS segment (up to 3 KVA) largely caters to the SOHO, SME, and corporate sectors
for stand-alone PCs, small network stations. The government is also a big
customer of this seg-ment. Small-medium UPS seg-ment (3-20 KVA) caters to
corporate, institutions, retail outlets, and hypercritical applications such as
ISPs, ERP implementers, VSAT, email servers. At the top end, high-end UPS or
enterprise seg-ment (20 KVA and above) caters to segments such as infotech,
telecom, datacen-ters, BPOs, and industrial entities.

Some of the UPS vendors only cater to the SOHO, with their entry-level
offerings. Here, with low price offerings, they target huge volumes. Meanwhile,
the enterprise segment brings in big revenues for a handful of big UPS vendors,
and a typical large enterprise goes for a range of power back up devi-ces.
Enterprises also go for UPS placed in a networked environment where workgroups
share a single UPS. Pradeep Pimpley, GM for operations, DB Power Electronics,
said "Mid-and high-end market witnessed good demand in terms of revenue.
In terms of volumes, low-end segment will be gro-wing for next couple of years.
Call centers, BPO, hospitality have shown good demand."

The growing UPS market clearly drives home the mes-sage that it is now
treated as mission critical equipment. "The power conditioning mar-ket is
getting more sensitive and mature to the evolving needs of the businesses. With
India assuming a key role in the Asian economy, businesses have to become
attuned to the fact that they need to be rob-ust in terms of infrastructure to
attract and retain investors. Hence network uptime is being viewed strategically
and upcoming businesses realize the importance of factoring and aligning it as a
key compo-nent in the overall business model," said Shrikant Bapat, Senior
VP for uptime solu-tions, Emerson Network Power India.

Technology Trends

What is so great about an UPS? A layman's reaction here would be, it's
just a battery inside. Yes, the battery is the nerve center of any UPS, but over
the years a whole lot of functionality has come into play that has digitized the
UPS, in sync with the users demands. Today these devices come with a slew of
intelligent features in-built. Quipped Deepak Sharma, MD, Eaton Power Quality:
"We are offer-ing UPS products from 500—5000 KVA in India. We believe
that R&D is the core strength of the company. Investments in R&D have
resulted in Eaton Power holding 122 active technology patents."

Meanwhile, companies like DB Power, one of the oldest UPS players in the
country, also offer technically rich products. Pradeep Pimpley, said " DB's
Harmony series UPS offers Green Power. With strict norms to be imposed by supply
authority, enterprises must opt for such UPS, which does not pollute the supply
power since it offers near unity power factor at the input and creates less
harmonic distor-tions. All this means better RoI during the operation of the
UPS."

Another Indian UPS vendor Numeric Power Systems has impressively grown over
the years, with a slew of offerings also exported to Europe, the US, and other
parts of the world. Said R Chellappan, MD, Numeric Power Systems: "A very
strong customer orienta-tion is key to the success in this industry. Hence, the
technologies incorporated in the UPS should be able to offer 99.99 percent
uptime. Today the latest technologies allow us to remotely manage and monitor
the UPS through computer systems."

The realization of the need for a reliable power backup architecture as a key
compo-nent of the IT infrastructure is the result of the organizations pressure
on its deliverables to its clients. As Numeric's Chella-ppan said: "Power
backups are like oxygen to the enterpri-ses". It has assumed such critical
proportions mainly because that the ramifications arising out of power blackouts
are many. For instance, one can imagine the damage that power shut down will
cause to a call center or a bank.

Going forward, the UPS market will get hotter, with vendors are flexing their
muscle with a slew of offerings cutting across all segments. While big players
gun for the big enterprises, at the same time the entry level will see volumes
growth. According to Shrikant Bapat, the outlook for the 2005 remains steady: In
sum, exciting days are ahead for the power back up market, and 2005 will firm up
the market with branded players further edging out the unorganized sector.

Shrikanth G

UPS

New Technologies

• Digital Signal Processing (DSP) technology ensures High
  Reliability of the UPS and enables faster response times of UPS to less than
  1 millisecond. It is the latest and most popular technology worldwide.

• Hot Sync Parallel Technology maximizes performance of
  individual UPS, provides capacity increase, and redundancy. Thus all
  critical loads are supported by UPS grade power, whatever maintenance needs
  arise.

• Advanced Battery Management increases battery's useful
  life by 50 percent, reduces battery replacement cost, and provides advance
  notice of end of battery life. It also constantly monitors battery charge
  status and reduces battery corrosion.

• Load Segmentation allows the UPS to differentiate between
  critical and non-critical loads, without the need for complex electronics.
  Ensures logical and orderly shutdown of non-critical systems, intelligently
  prevents data loss.

Source: Eaton Power

Market Trends

• Increasing online trend
• Shifting from distributed UPS (micro range) towards centralized UPS
• Customized solutions rather than standard UPS
• Predictive failure avoidance
• System integrators getting into the fray

Source: Industry