Environmental monitoring has become a hot spot in the technology landscape. Consequently, many companies have sprung up, each with a different take on the monitoring of temperature, humidity, and other factors. There are even long-established firms that are becoming more well-known as the subject of environmental monitoring has only recently moved front and center.
AKCP
AKCP's (www.AKCP.com) claim to fame is that it started the entire SNMP-based environmental monitoring industry. As such, it is the oldest and largest manufacturer in this field with more than 35,000 installations.
"We started the company when a data center at one of our clients melted down over the weekend," says John Pierson, sales manager at the company. "As it happened, his air conditioning had failed during the weekend when the computer center was operating unattended. On Monday morning, the employees arrived to find their data center was a sauna."
Prior to AKCP's arrival in the marketplace, there were ad-hoc environmental monitoring systems. Often these older data centers would have a temperature or humidity recorder logging data over some period of time. AKCP introduced the concept of network-enabling these data recorders and tying them into the existing networking management infrastructure using the SNMP protocol.
AKCP's latest system, the securityProbe, has integrated cameras and can talk to you over Skype if desired. securityProbe can physically monitor the RMS voltage, current, and power. It can tell how much battery life is left in the UPS and send encrypted shutdown commands to servers to reduce the load on the UPS. If the servers do not respond, the securityProbe can physically remove power from the servers using its power relays.
AVTECH
AVTECH Software (www.AVTECH.com) is a privately held corporation founded in 1988. The company began in software development and made its first IT environmental monitoring hardware in the mid-1990s. AVTECH believes its growth is due to its strong focus on software. Its Room Alert environmental monitoring products include a Web browser interface and bundled software that offers a wide set of features.
"If there is a need for hardware or software assistance, there is one single toll-free phone number to call," says Michael Sigourney, a senior product specialist at AVTECH. "These are just a couple of the reasons why AVTECH has doubled and tripled in sales revenue year after year since 1998."
According to Sigourney, the company serves many thousands of customers in 104 countries. This includes both large and small organizations. In addition, government, Fortune 500 data centers, SMEs, schools, and museums all use its products. Sigourney says AVTECH's products are also used in trains, planes, trucks, and rockets.
"Room Alert is used to monitor farms, zoos, nuclear facilities, warehouses, convenience stores, seasonal cabins in the North, and summer homes in the South," Sigourney notes. "There is a model of Room Alert for any application where users need to monitor environmental characteristics remotely to know immediately when changes occur, with optional data logging and graphing, a Web browser interface, and alerting by all popular methods."
As AVTECH's principle product, Room Alert comes in nine different models, with mounting options for rack, wall, and ceiling installations. The company also manufactures sensors to monitor all primary conditions such as temperature, power, humidity, flood, smoke, motion, airflow, room entry, and panic buttons.
"What is valued most is Room Alert's ease of use and reliability, software interface, ability to discover units across multiple subnets, ability to monitor unlimited units in a single Web interface, and advanced alerting capabilities,†Sigourney says. "That's why 86.6% of all customers since 1998 remain active customers to this date, renewing their optional maintenance each year."
Sensatronics
Sensatronics (www.Sensatronics.com) was founded about 15 years ago based on many years of working in the meteorological weather industry. The company founder realized that the technology that had been used so successfully in the agricultural industry could be redesigned and adapted to meet the automated temperature monitoring needs of the data center. To accomplish this, he founded Sensatronics with the goal of producing a low-cost temperature monitoring device using common technologies that could be easily integrated with any network.
The company manufactures a number of temperature and environmental monitors with varying capabilities. Its flagship product is the Senturion Rackmount Environmental Monitor, which can operate either as a standalone unit or be incorporated into a larger solution and includes temperature, humidity, and light level sensors.
"In order to create a true thermal picture, we have placed the external sensors in a wing board away from the main unit to mitigate any heat that may be produced during normal operation," says Curt Stanisewski, marketing manager at Sensatronics.
Senturion can accommodate up to eight external sensors and four IP cameras. Available probes include temperature, temperature/humidity, power presence, wetness, dry contact, door open/close, smoke, and motion. These environmental monitors can be incorporated into different network management applications. |
888.220.6700
Sales@AVTECH.com
AVTECH Software, Inc.