American Power Conversion
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| American Power Conversion Corp. | |
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| Type | Public (NASDAQ: APCC) |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1981 |
| Headquarters | West Kingston, Rhode Island |
| Products | Uninterruptible power supplies |
| Employees | 7,580 (2005) |
| Parent | Schneider Electric (pending) |
| Website | www.apcc.com |
American Power Conversion is a company with a worldwide presence based in West Kingston, Rhode Island and focused on providing "power availability solutions" to individuals and businesses. APC is best known for their manufacture of uninterruptible power supplies, mostly used as a backup power system for servers. Their current product line includes electrical power products as well as server racks, server cooling products and other datacenter products which APC calls Network Critical Physical Infrastructure.
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[edit] History
Three Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Lincoln Labs' electronic power engineers founded American Power Conversion in 1981. At the time, the research and development efforts of these three men were focused on solar power. Over the next few years, APC shifted its focus to power protection introducing its first UPS, the 750, in 1984. In July 1988 APC became a publicly held company. The stock was initially priced at $7.50, or $.125 per share when adjusted for stock splits.
[edit] Acquisition by Schnieder
APC is in the process of being acquired by the French holding company Schneider Electric.[citation needed] As of today, 7th December, 2006, weeks after the purchase, there has been no significant change in APC's operations.
[edit] Network critical physical infrastructure
APC is focusing on delivering a total and integrated NCPI solution (Network Critical Physical Infrastructure). This is all the data, power, cooling and physical parts of a data center that enables the servers and other IT equipment to run 24-7-365. The focus is increasingly on:
- Minimizing unscheduled down time
- Helping costumers to right-size the equipment
- Minimizing investment now, while retaining ease of upgrading the NCPI later
- Integration
- Reduce waste (time, down time, energy consumption, wrong equipment for the job etc.)
APC aims to achieve this by:
- Eliminating one time engineering
- Modulizing everything into mass produced standard building blocks
- Thinking every building block as a part of the NCPI from the very start.
- Allowing innovative thinking and quantum leaps in technology
- Always taking the stand of the costumer, solving his problems
- Educating costumers to be critical and do better themselves
This allows the selection of standardized, modular components to create a customized solution. This standardization coupled with the APC Design Portal enables an easily scalable architecture designed to meet changing needs and future expansion. This patent-pending approach provides increased availability, improved adaptability and speed of deployment as well as lowered total cost of ownership for IT environments – from wiring closets to computer rooms to data centers.
[edit] InfraStruXure™
APC’s InfraStruXure is an on-demand NCPI system. The InfraStruXure design integrates:
- Power management: UPS, Generators, Fuel cells etc.
- High precision Cooling
- IT equipment Racks
- Data center management
- Data center services
[edit] Recall
In 2003 APC issued a recall for 900,000 back-up power supply devices. There was a risk the power supply devices could overheat and cause a fire hazard. UPS models Back-UPS CS350 and the Back-UPS CS 500 were affected by the recall.
[edit] Key Application Areas
Today, the Company focuses its efforts on four key application areas:
- Home/Home Office
- Business Networks
- Access Provider Networks
- Data Centers and Facilities
Each requires customized efforts for products, sales and marketing, but each has a common theme: high availability is increasingly essential. APC is positioning itself to be the preferred brand worldwide in all four of these application areas.
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