Software company CA Technologies and the vendor of electrical equipment Eaton have partnered to deliver joint turn-key solutions to data center customers that combine their respective products. The package is going to consist of Eaton's electrical-infrastructure gear and CA's data center infrastructure management (DCIM) software.

It is mainly a way for the two companies to leverage each-other's go-to-market channels, Terrence Clark, general manager of energy and sustainability solutions at CA, said. “We're going to the market together … and we're already working together on a number of opportunities,” he said.

One of the primary target markets for this joint solution are data center service providers. This is yet another sign that DCIM has become more than just a product sold to data center operators to give them more visibility into the way their systems interact and consume resources.

CA and Eaton's angle in selling the package to service providers is that it will enable them to offer DCIM as a service to their end users. DCIM is increasingly becoming a way for data center providers to expand the list of services they offer to their clients.

San Francisco-based Digital Realty Trust, one of the world's largest data center providers, announced its own proprietary DCIM solution called EnVision, which it plans to offer to all of its tenants around the world.

Another example is IO, a Phoenix-based provider famous for its modular data center offering IO.Anywhere. The company invests a lot of time and resources into development and marketing of its DCIM software called IO.OS, which it sells as a stand-alone solution on top of offering it to its data center tenants.

Eaton's biggest competitors in the data center space – Schneider Electric and Emerson Network Power – both have leading DCIM products of their own. The partnership with CA seems to give it a quick DCIM play without having to invest in a lengthy and expensive software-development effort.

While CA's DCIM software has talked to Eaton's data center gear before, part of this deal is deeper integration with Eaton's IPM (Intelligent Power Management) software. Dhesikan Ananchaperumal, senior VP and CTO for DCIM at CA, said integration with CA gave what was essentially basic device-monitoring software powerful analytics and data from non-Eaton devices.

Analytics is a key part of DCIM. Power monitoring and management are standard capabilities all customers require and get. “But the analytics on top of that is key, and that's where we provide value as a software vendor.”