Five Questions With: Jay Owen

JAY OWEN is senior vice president of Schneider Electric’s IT Division in North America. / COURTESY SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC
JAY OWEN is senior vice president of Schneider Electric’s IT Division in North America. / COURTESY SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

Jay Owen recently was appointed senior vice president of Schneider Electric’s IT Division in North America. Owen had served as interim head of the IT Division since January 2016, and has been with the company since 2007. He talks about his new role and some of the company’s strategic partnerships with Providence Business News.

PBN: Tell me about your new role at Schneider Electric and what your responsibilities are.

OWEN: As senior vice president of Schneider Electric’s IT Division in North America, I lead commercialization of Schneider Electric’s integrated IT infrastructure and software offers. This includes a wide variety of products that provide power and availability solutions for IT and communications technologies for both businesses and consumers as part of our Schneider Electric and APC by Schneider Electric portfolios of solutions and services.

As the world embraces the digital economy, consumers and businesses alike are reliant on connectivity. For businesses, the data center has emerged as the center of our highly-connected world; and for the consumer, this can mean everything from maintaining internet access to keeping devices powered at all times.

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At a time when connectivity is critical, I’m excited to be leading Schneider Electric’s IT Division to ensure that life is on everywhere, for everyone and at every moment.

PBN: Can you talk about how the industry is changing?

OWEN: Technology needs are evolving rapidly, and as a provider of IT infrastructure and power and cooling solutions and services, Schneider Electric must evolve with the industry.

With Gartner predicting 26 billion IoT devices to be deployed globally by 2020, digitization and the growth of the Internet of Things will put significant demands on IT infrastructure and will dramatically reshape home and business networks and the IT architectures that support them.

For example, the growing quantity of data – due in part to the growth of IoT and connected devices – is having a transformational effect on the data center market and the technologies needed to support it.

With this onslaught of connected devices and the amount of data generated, businesses are struggling to keep their networks efficient, reliable and always on. By innovating at every level of their IT infrastructure, organizations can become more competitive within their respective markets and improve their business from the server room all the way to the boardroom.

PBN: What are some of Schneider Electric’s strategic partnerships?

OWEN: We work with a number of strategic partners to provide businesses across all industries the opportunity to benefit from Schneider Electric’s reliable, connected and efficient solutions. With the largest community of partners tailoring solutions for home and business networks, Schneider Electric and APC by Schneider Electric protect critical information and data for individuals and businesses.

For example, we recently announced a collaboration with Hewlett Packard Enterprise on the HPE Micro Datacenter. Together, we’re delivering an end-to-end data center offering that helps users better maintain their data centers, address the challenges of IoT, all while also innovating within their organizations.

Through strategic partnerships, Schneider Electric delivers advanced solutions that meet the new demands of the IT environment of the future.

PBN: How do you plan to help customers address new opportunities in the age of Internet of Things?

OWEN: I look forward to supporting our customers in their continuing digital transformation. Not only will my team strive to help customers better understand the new needs brought about by IoT, but we will also enable them to seamlessly improve enterprise, small business and home IT infrastructure availability and efficiency.

For businesses, this role enables me to help customers innovate their infrastructure and transform IT from back-end cost centers to agile, strategic assets to support business growth. At home, consumers can rest-assured that they can maintain an always-on connected lifestyle through reliable network and power-protection solutions.

Across Schneider Electric’s portfolio of innovative, interconnected solutions, we’ll support our customers in realizing the value of efficiency and reliability.

PBN: What do you like about working in this industry?

OWEN: With more than 20 years of experience in helping support the massive, disruptive change that is occurring across the industry, there is one thing that has kept me passionate about my work: it’s transformative impact.

There are so many incredible people and businesses changing the way we live every single day. I take great pride in knowing that the work my team is doing can underpin their efforts and ensure life is always on in our increasingly connected world. I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings and how my team can continue to rise to the challenge by enabling innovation at every level within every industry.

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