Nationwide Uses Monico Gateways to Prevent Critical Data Loss
Nationwide Mutual Insurance was founded in 1926 and is based in Columbus, Ohio. They are currently #54 in Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” and #68 in the most recent Fortune 500 ranking. Their portfolio includes various insurance and financial services for millions of customers worldwide focusing on domestic property and casualty insurance, life insurance and retirement savings, asset management, and strategic investments.
Because they are responsible for such a vast amount of personal and financial data, Nationwide's data center infrastructure must be capable of secure and reliable storage. All company and customer data for Ohio is stored digitally in servers at two separate facilities. These data centers operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to ensure data is neither lost nor stolen. As these datacenters are critical infrastructure facilities and require a constant supply of power, the main power system is backed up by several Caterpillar® diesel-powered generators connected to an uninterruptible power supply (UPS).
If the main utility power fails, the UPS will provide a buffer of instant power while the diesel generators engage. This seamless transition of power is critical to maintaining data integrity. Nationwide’s facility managers must periodically run specific load tests on these generator sets to ensure they are functioning properly and the seamless transition of power can occur when needed. Two years ago, Nationwide sought to implement a simple, user-friendly monitoring solution that would give them the real-time data they require for generator visibility during testing and normal operation. These tests consider factors such as fuel level, internal temperatures, rpm, and generator load. Digitally monitoring this information increases the ease of testing and the reliability of the test results.
Originally, the firm attempted to use an OEM monitoring solution. But after no success with that option, Jonathan Patton, the Project Coordinator at Nationwide, demanded an alternative from their genset dealer. Monico was able to provide Nationwide with a preconfigured solution to suit their requirements that is entirely internal to their secure network. When Patton was asked about the Monico Gateway he said, “The gateways are plug and play, and the software to configure the gateways is very user-friendly. The gateways have always been extremely reliable… I wouldn’t consider any other product than Monico.”
Monico’s user-friendly, pre-configured solutions are what set us apart from our competitors. In this data-driven world, Monico provides the desired data to facility and maintenance operators in an efficient way to help make their job as painless as possible. “During testing of generators or an outage where the gensets are protecting IT load, the gateways provide us enhanced data collection for our Operations team to analyze,” said Patton. “In an outage situation where critical IT load is on generators, they give us added confidence that we won’t have any interruptions.”
The Monico gateways for this project collect genset data via either S.A.E. J1939 or CAT® Data Link (Caterpillar’s proprietary protocol) and convert the data to a protocol that will interface with Nationwide’s Building Automation System while also sending data to a local HMI (Human Machine Interface). Patton states “the Monico HMI has brought so much to the table for our end-user Operations team. Trending/fault codes/individual data points… We have only begun to scratch the surface.” The use of a local HMI allows operators to visualize and interact with real-time data coming from the assets on a touch screen. Virtual HMI capabilities are available with any Monico PLUS™ Gateway option using an internal network.
Monico provides full solutions to customers who desire to know more about their critical assets. We give customers the ability to view their data real-time, which helps with maintenance scheduling, preventing critical data loss, and minimizing the risk of asset failure. Our goal is to give customers the control they need over their data to improve the functionality and performance of their assets.