Powerapp gives Zen Systems more time and better billing data

Zen Systems was founded in 2002 to provide businesses with professional telecommunications and networking solutions.

Today, Zen Systems provides a number of solutions for hosting, security and the Internet. Driven by a growing number of customers and an increased focus on outsourcing, the hosting business in particular, with web hosting, dedicated hosting and server management has grown rapidly.

Growth requires automation

The rapid growth presented Zen Systems with new challenges. Electricity prices have increased, and there is a stronger focus on carbon dioxide reduction and green financial results. This means that month after month, Zen Systems spent more and more time reading electricity meters and invoicing its growing number of customers. The work was made more difficult because the servers were located in a number of data centres.

A solution had to be found. Zen Systems operates in a very competitive market and did not want to commit to a comprehensive and costly solution. That is why Zen Systems tested various cheaper meters, but found that these did not result in sufficient gains in precision, quality and automation.

“Through our research and testing, we found that there were large differences in the ease of use, the quality and the price of automated solutions for reading our electricity consumption. The low-cost solutions were not reliable and the more professional solutions were typically very expensive and complex, especially if the solution was to be automated and approved for invoicing of electricity,” says Sven Møller, managing director of Zen Systems.

A clear difference with Powerapp

The testing resulted in Zen Systems selecting a solution from Powerapp. “Compared to other solutions, it is clear that Powerapp was developed for data centres by people from the data centre industry. We have managed to greatly improve our processes for the benefit of our customers and our accounting department” says Sven Møller.

With Powerapp, Zen Systems measures the customers’ power consumption individually, regardless of whether they have one server or multiple cabinets. Power measurements are used for invoicing and for planning upgrades of the customers’ power supplies. Since the power measurements also show the load of circuit groups, racks and other infrastructures, the measurements are also used to issue alerts before any circuits are overloaded or racks receive too little cooling.

“Powerapp has given us much better insight into our infrastructure and power consumption. We have used the knowledge to implement changes that have improved our business. I have no doubt that the continuous measurements will also influence our decisions in the future. Only by measuring can we obtain sufficient knowledge to optimise our business”, concludes Sven Møller.