"True Online" double conversion UPSes - what's the big deal?

[BillP]

A Leibert sales representative recently came through our company and has all the sales staff trampling each other to bow at the altar of Siemens Power inc.

I've got no problem with the quality of power provided by their UPSes, but I come from an APC world, and Liebert's management software and hardware is still in the bronze age compared to APC. Their management cards can't manage all UPS functions, their management agent software is poorly documented, painfully slow to install, and fails to complete 20% of the time.

In other words all Liebert has over APC is that a GXT2 doesn't "click" when it goes to battery.

So can anyone give me a compelling argument I can take to my sales people to tell them they shouldn't saddle us engineers with terrible management capabilities for the sake of "true online" capabilities?

[Erasmus_apc]

"True Online" is just marketing fluff used to add some flare to an already established UPS topology (which is shared across many UPS manufacturers) - Double Conversion Online. If you look at the GXT2 topology they describe in their tech. docs. on the Emerson/Liebert webpage, it basically gives a "nicely worded" version of the topology including "Dynamic Bypass" and "Power Factor Correction/Rectifier/Charger". This isn't to say that APC does not also try to hype up its product a little of course...you need to get the customer excited about it.

Basically, Liebert's units seem to do the same thing ours do: they take incoming utility, pass it through an "input" portion that cleans up the incoming power, converts to DC and also functions as a battery charger. They also have an inverter section that takes the DC from the input (or battery, depending on power path needed) and recreates the sine wave for the output. Naturally, our units also have an automatic bypass, that can also be forced via software command or a physical switch on many of our SURT double conversion online UPS'.

In terms of actual performance comparisons...from the basic tech specs each of the units look fairly similar (ours seem to calculate out providing more runtime at certain load amounts however)...I'm sure you'd have to go into some serious engineering nitty-gritty or a vast history of "failure rates" to really find an indication of "which unit is better". As far as APC tech support goes, I can only say is that I very rarely see RT failures, and I know our AFR rates on all Smart-UPS lines are competitive with other UPS mfgs.

As far as our software goes, being APC-only tech support I can't fairly say that I know much about Liebert's offerings, and I try not to be critical of things I'm not intimately familiar with. Our product does offer full control over all diagnostic and UPS-critical functionality and personally, I do find it all very snappy to use and formatted in an intuitive way that makes analyzing a problem or identifying trends that much easier. Long story short I guess, there's no point using a UPS in an IT environment to power your load if you don't have full control, diagnostic and information gathering capability from it, and if both UPS' seem equal in terms of power performance...that lends the decision to the one with the best manageability and control options.

[BillP]

Thank you for the nicely thought out reply.
I talked over your answers with some guys high in the sales department, and the problem appears to be two-fold:

One is that they were getting their information about what APC products could and could not do from Liebert, which is hardly an unbiased source. The liebert guys was comparing the GXT2 to the Smart-UPS 750, which I have come to understand is not an apples-to-apples comparision by any means. (A better comparison would have been the SURTA2000RMXL.) The Liebert guy was saying only Liebert does Double Conversion Online, and APC only sold line-interactive UPSes. At the meeting that this happened in, when I asked him point blank "So you're telling me that a company (APC) that can even build custom UPS solutions for oceangoing vessels can't do this?" he started using weasel words like "As far as I know..." and "I've never seen..."

(In fairness, this was a reseller of Libert products, not a Siemens employee - so that's not a slam on the ethics of Siemens.)

The second is that our sales department is feeling the love from Liebert because they have a local rep to give them these flashy and unfair and misleading demos, but no love at all from APC, either on the sales or support end.

My personal experience with APC support is that it's top-notch. So at some point I'll have to find the time to locate a local APC representative (that is not another IT sales and consulting firm like we essentially are) in central Michigan so that they can get the other side of the story and we can start buying based on correct information, instead of misleading sales tactics.

Message was edited by: DevAudio for readability

[Erasmus_apc · Accepted solution]

Well it sounds like you have gotten the right unit series to compare the GXT2 systems to. The SURTD/SURTA (depending on voltage/size requirements) is the best apples-to-apples comparison...so if they think the Smart-UPS 750 is the best we can do that's a serious underestimation. We carry UPS' from Standby topology up to Delta Conversion and Double Conversion Online.

It definitely sounds like there was some inaccurate information given to the folks at your company and a definite skew on the sales side. I would have your guys call our commercial sales team (1-800-800-4272) and have them dig for the sales rep. in your area, or if you have an established contact to get in touch with them.