Global Business Services Provider, Maritz Europa Invests in PowerWAVE9000 To Protect Key Business Systems

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Maritz Europa Limited was formed in 1974. Today, part of the Grass Roots Group, the company has become a global provider of business services which improve employee skills, increase morale through incentives, create innovative events and communications materials for a multitude of campaigns. The company operates in a wide variety of industry sectors including automotive, pharmaceutical, financial services, IT, telecommunications, retail and hospitality.

For their first UPS system, Maritz Europa installed UPSL's PowerWAVE5000TM system, supplied by Uninterruptible Power Supplies Ltd (UPSL) to support the entire infrastructure of its data centre, including web and database servers and communications equipment. As with most IT installations, its business has grown and there has been a need to increase the technology to support it.

John Kilner Smith, support technician at Maritz Europa comments: "To ensure consistent protection we chose to upgrade our UPS to the modular PowerWAVE9000 TM. It has the advantage of being scalable, adding UPS modules in parallel to increase support to the load or adding security through redundancy."

David Bond, managing director of Uninterruptible Power Supplies Limited, commented: "As well as supporting the increased load, upgrading to the modular technology of the PowerWAVE9000TM brings significant additional benefits. For example, the 'hot-swap' capability allows UPS modules to be interchanged when needed, reducing system downtime and considerably reducing the mean time to repair (MTTR). This helps Maritz to provide reliable customer service by minimizing downtime through the highest levels of power availability."

Using the new PowerWAVE9000TM solution, the company's blade servers with leading power factors will be efficiently protected.

An additional benefit that Maritz will gain from the upgrade is the capability to facilitate 'right-sizing'. This ensures both energy efficiency and the correct loading for today's needs without having to invest in over capacity. With the modular format, capacity can be easily increased as and when required.

Kilner-Smith added: "Although we've never had a total power outage, our on-line double conversion UPS system is vital as it continuously conditions the raw mains electricity supply. Our IT infrastructure is being protected from less obvious crash-inducing mains power conditions like voltage and frequency fluctuations."

Maritz Europa plans to supplement the autonomy of their power protection system by adding a diesel generator to provide sufficient support until mains power is restored.

David Bond commented: "For some critical loads, extended autonomy, rather than graceful shutdown, is the preferred option for dealing with a long-term power disruption. Using both a UPS system plus a diesel generator provides total continuity until mains power comes back online."