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Las Vegas, NV, July 11, 2011 — Today at Cisco Live, Cisco’s annual IT and communications conference, APC by Schneider Electric, a global leader in integrated critical power and cooling services, introduced multiple new data center solutions to support the IT reseller community. These solutions, including the NetShelter^® SX Side Airflow Solution Duct kit for Cisco Nexus® 7018 data center networking switch, Design and Configuration Guides and the integration of APC solutions within the Netformx DesignXpert platform are all designed to increase the efficiency of deployment of Cisco solutions. These APC data center solutions ultimately enable IT resellers to provide more complete data center solutions for their customers with increased efficiency and decreased time of deployment.

“Our partners within the IT reseller community are tasked with providing complete solutions to their customers that can be designed and implemented very quickly,” said Marc Sherman, Vice President, Marketing & Sales Enablement, North America, Schneider Electric. “APC is always looking for ways to assist these partners to provide the robust solutions to meet their customer’s needs, and these three offerings provide support for the implementation of Cisco solutions within the data center environment. Ultimately, IT resellers will be able to deliver their customers a more complete, packaged solution with virtually no additional time or effort needed.”

The following data center solutions are being announced today at Cisco Live:

APC NetShelter SX Side Airflow Solution Kit for the Cisco Nexus 7018 Data Center Networking Switch

APC’s NetShelter SX Networking Enclosure and Side Airflow Solution Kit is designed to support the Cisco Nexus 7018 high-speed, high-capacity network switch. This model is part of Cisco’s next generation of networking switches for medium and large data centers and is built to support high-density loads. APC’s airflow solution kit provides hot and cold aisle isolation required by the switch and still maintains the proven NetShelter SX design when attached to an enclosure. This isolation is created by side airflow ducting that allows the switch to pull from the cold aisle only, ensuring that only cold air is brought in through the switch intake. Today, data centers with high-density networking deployments can look to APC to provide the enclosures and ducting innovation needed to accommodate the Cisco switch with a solution that is listed as a verified rack vendor by Cisco in the site preparation guide for supporting Nexus 7018 and 7010 switches.

APC Design and Configuration Guides

APC has developed three Design and Configuration Guides to assist Cisco channel partners to configure power requirements, select appropriate racks, address airflow issues, and suggest cable management solutions for Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) server platform, Cisco Catalyst Series Switches and Multilayer Director Switches , and the Cisco Nexus platform 7000 series switches. Each of the Design and Configuration Guides provide channel partners and end users recommendations as to which APC power and rack solutions are appropriate to support the given Cisco product. These guides offer IT reseller peace of mind that they are supporting their Cisco products with the appropriate power and rack solutions, ultimately ensuring the best, and most complete solution is provided to their customers.

APC Enhances Integration with Netformx Design Expert

The integration of APC solutions into Netformx’s flagship product, DesignXpert, delivers IT Resellers enhanced capabilities. Designs created with DesignXpert, which include Cisco solutions up to 20Kw, now benefit from an automatically generated list of required APC products and services. This functionality significantly decreases time to deployment as resellers no longer need to spend valuable hours manually planning out power and cooling support for their network closet, pod or small/medium data center application design. With this enhanced functionality, IT resellers are able to present more robust and flexible physical infrastructure designs to their customers while shortening the sales cycle, increasing sales revenue and margins and providing more complete and reliable solutions.

”We are delighted to further our partnership with APC by offering an automated way to accelerate the requirements-to-order process and enable IT resellers to recommend the optimal APC solutions when a design is created,” said Ittai Bareket, Chief Executive Officer, Netformx. “Ensuring that a complete and valid power and cooling solution is delivered as an integral part of the network design directly drives customer satisfaction and the ability to close business faster.”

APC offers a robust Channel Partner Program for IT resellers. The program offers differentiated program levels that reflect partners’ core competencies and areas of expertise. The APC Channel Partner Program structure ensures that partners will be profitable through comprehensive training, online resources and co-marketing initiatives designed to enable solution selling.