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EcoStruxure IT Expert + APC E-Rate Eligible Products

EcoStruxure IT Expert for UPS lifecycle management

Abstract

Howard County Public Schools, made up of 82 sites and 578 UPS units, overcame its resource gaps and multiple third-party point tools to clear the way for full visibility into its UPS environment. Using EcoStruxure IT Expert, the team can now monitor and manage the entire fleet and identify vulnerable UPS units. They can then replace batteries or the UPS itself, in a cost-effective way, and avoid downtime associated with unplanned failures. As a result, the district will achieve one of its key initiatives by adopting APC Smart-UPS systems across all sites and tying everything into EcoStruxure IT Expert.

What Data Networks Did for HCPSS

  • Reduced potential for significant power outages
  • Prioritized vulnerable UPS systems for service or replacement
  • Saved time with proactive resolutions
  • Ensured greater budget predictability by taking advantage of E-Rate funding

The challenge

Today’s K-12 students, teachers, and administrators rely on seamless connectivity to keep IT systems and devices online for continuous learning. Yet many school districts face these common IT challenges: tight budgets, limited resources, and lean IT teams. These challenges can make it difficult to efficiently and proactively manage IT operations.

Seamless connectivity also requires continuous power. Power issues remain the most serious and severe cause of data center outages, according to a recent Uptime Institute report. The reasons vary, but having reliable backup power helps to mitigate power disruptions, regardless of their cause.

The Howard County Public School System (HCPSS) in Maryland faced this very situation. HCPSS is home to approximately 60,000 K-12 students and 9,000 teachers, administrators, and staff.

The HCPSS network— including a fleet of 578 uninterruptible power supply (UPS) units— spans 82 sites and is managed by a small team of three network specialists. As some of the UPS units were aging, they could not be consistently relied upon to provide backup power.

Prior to 2024, the HCPSS network team had to take a reactive approach to maintaining its UPS fleet due to limited resources. They used several third-party tools to glean limited insight into their UPS systems and then had to integrate and manually verify that data.

The result? Manual processes, limited insights, and a small team meant that these aging UPS units could fail at any moment, putting the district at risk for downtime.

These failures would then require multiple technical support calls to troubleshoot, replace batteries, or replace the UPS altogether. In 2024 alone, the HCPSS team made 78 support calls and spent 20 hours dealing with battery replacements. In other words, they spent more time reacting to issues and had less time for proactive UPS management.

The solution

HCPSS engaged Data Networks— a Schneider Electric partner— to refresh a portion of its network every year. Because power is considered critical infrastructure, the district not only chose to put its 578 UPS units on annual refresh cycle, but it also decided to adopt E-Rate-eligible APC Smart-UPS™ products to simplify manageability. Schneider Electric engineers started with a Power Infrastructure Assessment and applied the cloud-based EcoStruxure™ IT Expert software to the HCPSS UPS environment. EcoStruxure IT Expert enables secure monitoring and visibility into the IT physical infrastructure. The dashboard provides a single view to proactively monitor and manage IT equipment from anywhere. The software also enabled engineers to benchmark the HCPSS UPS fleet against other customer fleets in the Schneider Electric data lake to show how its UPS systems stack up under similar conditions. By combining this data with the ages of each of the district’s UPS units, HCPSS was able to identify the 60 most critical units for replacement in year one. Data Networks, as the awarded contractor for the district’s E-Rate Form 470, successfully partnered with Schneider Electric to deliver and install the 60 E-Rate-eligible APC Smart-UPS systems for HCPSS. With the new lifecycle management plan, HCPSS can proactively replace approximately 50–60 UPS units each year, avoiding the downtime that comes with unplanned UPS failure and enabling better budget predictability.

Mission accomplished

The biggest difference between manually managing 578 UPS units and using EcoStruxure IT Expert to manage them? Today, HCPSS is much more proactive. The team can see battery health, load levels, and environmental data— all in real time— and take appropriate action before UPS failure.

In fact, by analyzing load data from EcoStruxure IT Expert, HCPSS was able to reduce the number of UPS units in each network closet and determine if any external batteries were needed to meet runtime requirements.

The result? EcoStruxure IT Expert enabled HCPSS to proactively plan and budget for annual UPS replacements— saving time and effort by eliminating manual monitoring, reducing costly downtime, and allowing schools to focus on what matters most— ensuring learning never stops.

Click here to view the PDF version of the EcoStruxure IT Expert + APC E-Rate Eligible Products case study.