Frost & Sullivan Names Eaton its 2008 Company of the Year in Europe in the Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) Market

Based on its recent analysis of the European uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) markets, Frost & Sullivan has recognized Eaton (www.eaton.com) with the 2008 European Uninterruptible Power Supplies Company of the Year Award. Eaton's excellence in its core UPS business and customer satisfaction demonstrate an extraordinary level of business performance.

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has demonstrated unparalleled excellence within its industry. The award is based on numerous factors including the company's business development, competitive strategy, customer satisfaction and leadership. This recipient is perceived to exhibit outstanding management and consistent growth. The company must offer high quality products and/or services and have a positive social and economic impact on local and national communities.

Eaton credits much of its success to a combination of customer-driven initiatives, product line innovations, acquisitions and geographic expansion. Eaton embarked on an aggressive growth strategy as part of its expansion campaign to strengthen its UPS business. The 2007 acquisition of MGE Office Protection Systems™ brought the company considerable geographic expansion and complementary UPS products. The acquisition also increased Eaton's presence in the region and its distribution network in serving customers. Additional expansion across western and eastern European countries came through the company's acquisitions of the Moeller® Group, Balmen Electronic and PK Electronics NV. In Southeast Asia, the company acquired Taiwanese UPS manufacturer, Phoenixtec. Eaton also broadened its power quality product portfolio by purchasing Pulizzi Engineering and Aphel Technologies.

"Eaton added close to 50 channel partners just in Europe to cover important sales and services businesses across the Middle East, North America and Europe," says Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Chandni Raj. "Eastern Europe and Russia together helped Eaton's business increase dramatically, mainly due to its successful strategy of opening new offices, adding resellers and enhancing distribution and servicing capabilities."

With such vast resources at its disposal, Eaton has maximized customer satisfaction and sales support by conducting special training programs to equip its customers and distributors with advanced skills and knowledge regarding products and services. The company also conducts an annual review of its customers to gain constructive feedback and establish best practices. Eaton's review revealed a much higher customer satisfaction rating than in previous years, mainly due to its strengthened distribution capabilities, expanded services network and enhanced product portfolio.

Eaton is also pursuing its specialization in Information Technology (IT) and data centre solutions by launching the Eaton enclosure power distribution unit (ePDU™), which can support varying power levels in a rack and monitor power consumption down to the individual server. Also introduced were the Eaton BladeUPS™, a rack-based solution tailor-made for high-powered blade servers, and the Eaton 9130 UPS. While already being remarkably efficient at below 30 percent load, Eaton's BladeUPS was further upgraded to interface with the Eaton rack power module (RPM) for advanced scalable power protection in high-density computing environments.