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8 www.dcseurope.info I November 2015

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Supporting the CodeBy Steve Hone, Operations Director, Data Centre Alliance.

OUR EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Simon Campbell-Whyte normally writes this monthly Journal forward, however

Simon is currently on sick leave so it falls on me

to stand in on this occasion.

As I write delegates will be returning from the 2015 annual update meeting for the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) which this year took place in Milan on the 6th October. Many of you are aware of the DCA’s long term support as Endorsers of the code, however what you may not aware of is as an Industry Association Endorser we are also required to take on additional Endorser responsibilities which we take very seriously in our support of both the code and Paolo Bertoldi European (Commission - DG JRC) and his team that run the code on behalf of the EU Commission to help in a wider adoption of this scheme.

“Extract from Code of Conduct on Data Centres – Endorser Best practice commitments for industry associations / Standards bodies; Guidelines – Version 2.0.1, January 2013”:

1. Develop and support industry specific literature including: A. Technical training B. Manuals C. Case studies 2. Integrate Energy Efficiency into existing guidelines e.g. ITSMF7 library 3. Promote the Code of Conduct best practices 4. Help develop independent metrics, standards, gather data etc. 5. Once a year, report activities towards achieving their commitments, directly to the Code of Conduct secretariat

In response to these commitments; the DCA has firstly tried to make it as easy as possible for organisations wishing to find out more to locate the information needed.

Existing DCA members when asked commented that it was not always easy to find the relevant information so the DCA created a dedicated URL: www.EUCodeofConduct.EU which takes you to an information page on the DCA website providing helpful information and direct links to the related EU Commission JRC pages needed to either become a participant or endorser in their own right. The DCA continues to fulfil ALL

its annual commitments as an industry association in fact this months DCA journal edition is dedicated solely to the EU Code of Conduct with articles from existing DCA members who are also enthusiastic supporters of the Code and who are seeing the benefits of adopting the Code as both Participants and or fellow Endorsers.

The DCA will continuing to work with existing Members to ensure their EU code of Conduct status is fully featured and recognised on DCA website and we will continue to encourage all members who have already adopted the EU Code of Conduct to report directly back annually to the commission to maintain their status.

Any case studies which highlight the “before and after” energy saving effects of adopting the EU Code of Conduct are always welcomed as this helps to both demonstrate your own ongoing commitment to the code and also helps to encourage others to adopt the scheme at the same time.

I would like to thank all the members who submitted articles in this month’s DCA Journal and wanted to wish Simon on behalf of all members a speedy recovery.

The urge for sustainability and environmental protection is not new, but the arguments for us all to take positive action are becoming ever more compelling. Sea levels have risen by as much as 8 inches since the beginning of the 20th century and are predicted to rise by as much as 3 feet by the end of this century. More than 90% of the heat produced by human-produced greenhouse gases is absorbed by our oceans and the images of melting glaciers and the Greenland Ice Sheet are chilling clues to what may lie ahead. As consensus builds that climate change and global warming caused by human activity are impacting the health of our planet, opinion is also building that business needs to take positive action to control the negative impacts of production.

Energy consumption and the data centre

From personal computers to mainframes to servers and supercomputers, IT as a whole is a major consumer of electricity and the negative environmental impact is not helped by the fact that the majority of electric power globally is still generated by coal. So what does this mean for data centres? Since data centres represent concentrated computing power overlaid by additional energy use to cool the building to optimal temperature ranges, it is not surprising that shareholders, customers and the public at large express concerns about their impact.

With the growth of big data, cloud and high performance computing, demands on data centres around the world continue to expand year on year and as businesses need more storage and data processing capacity, so data centres draw more and more power. Modern data

EU Code of Conduct or floating data centres? The choice is clearBy Lexie Gower, Marketing Manager, Datum Datacentres.

November 2015 I www.dcseurope.info 9

dca review l The eU Code of Conduct The eU Code of Conduct l DCA Review

THE DCA’s energy efficiency and sustainability group’s chair John Booth recently attended on behalf of the BCS, Chartered Institute for IT, Data Centre Specialist Group (DCSG) and the Data Centre Alliance, the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres best practice committee update meeting at the EU-JRC’s research centre in Ispra, Italy.

The EUCOC, for those that have been hiding under a rock for the last 8 years is a series of 155 best practices for energy efficiency that all types of data centres/server rooms/comms cupboards or even machine rooms (yes I’ve still heard of some organisations that call data centres machine rooms!) can adopt within their rooms to reduce energy consumption and thus cost.

The best practices cover management, IT procurement and provisioning, cooling, power systems (UPS/batteries) design for new builds, and monitoring/measurement.

The EUCOC is used widely across the EU and currently has over 280 data centres participating and in excess of 300 endorsers. These are consultants, manufacturers in the supply chain and other bodies such as the DCA, etc.

Other endorsers to the EUCOC include the Green Grid, CEN/CENELEC/ETSI, the European standards bodies, IT manufactures such as Intel, HP, Cisco, M&E manufacturers such as Emerson Network Power and of course the design and build companies such as Future Tech, 2BM, and Keysource. The EUCOC best practice committee meeting is an annual event, and brings together endorser and participant organisations to discuss the current best practices (over 150). It is normally open to all endorsers and participants but this year due to space constraints only a selected group were invited.

The purpose is to review the entire portfolio of energy efficiency best practices, this in some cases can mean the removal of a best practice if that best practice is no longer applicable or is indicative of an outdated technology. We go through each and every best practice to determine whether it stays in, goes, gets an elevated status i.e. moves from new/retrofit to entire data centre, gets edited for content or has its value increased/decreased as required.

We then discuss the suggestions that endorsers and participants can put forward. Over the course of the debate, we also

discuss section 10, items that will enter the best practice list, and section 11 items under consideration. These areas of our meeting are always highly charged as we evaluate cutting edge or in some cases bleeding edge solutions and technologies that some feel may become prevalent in the data centre space over the next ten years. For instance we have had a number of liquid cooling best practices for at least 2 years, advanced DCiM concepts for at least the same amount of time. We’ve also been at the forefront of global data centre thinking regarding the fine management of the IT stack, (by that I mean the detailed analysis of what the “User” should have or wants from IT rather than what IT can give the “User”. This small concept however has implications in all areas of data centre design, build and operations.

The Code was advanced thinking in 2008 when it was first mooted, and it remains advanced thinking today. As you can imagine, the experts that appear at this event are those that you see on the podium’s and stages at all the worlds global data centre related events, thus you can be assured that the best practices do not favour a type of technology or a vendor, and as such are completely independent. This can be quite a daunting process as each element is

EU Code of Conduct updateBy John Booth, Managing Director, Carbon3IT Ltd.

centre owners and operators ignore this fact at their peril and the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres was created specifically in response to such increasing energy consumption and the need to reduce the related environmental, economic and energy supply security impacts.

Recent signee to the EU initiative, Datum Datacentres is amongst those forward thinking organisations which took a proactive approach to energy consumption and environmental efficiency from the outset. Dominic Phillips, Managing Director, Datum, says: “In designing our business critical data centre co-location service, we were aware of the need to reduce the environmental impact of data centres.

From the outset, working with Keysource to optimise the design of our data centre, we were determined to offer our clients a facility that was not just highly secure and resilient but was also as energy efficient as possible. Selecting the advanced and environmentally intelligent adiabatic free cooling design was just the start. We went on to achieve ISO50001 certification for energy management and our recent signing to the EU Code of Conduct, combined with DCA Certification to Class 3, completes the picture and shows our ongoing commitment to energy efficiency.”Commitment to change

Full commitment to the EU Code of Conduct is a prerequisite for the DCA Certification which helps to guide potential data centre clients in their selection by providing meaningful insight into a data centre’s fit for purpose for a desired business role.

The ISO 50001 International Standard supports energy awareness by ensuring organisations establish the systems and processes necessary to improve their energy performance, taking into account energy efficiency, use, and consumption.

Alongside these two initiatives, the EU Code works to inform and stimulate the reduction of energy consumption in a cost-effective manner without hampering the mission critical function of data centres. Its clear practical framework of best practices encourage the review of data centre resource usage and the implementation of changes that improve the effective use of resources, particularly energy efficiency.

Data centre owners, operators and clients will all benefit from paying more than lip service to these initiatives – after all, if the ice cap melts completely we may have to work out how to build data centres on floating platforms!



discussed in detail and all avenues explored to ensure that the best practice is worthwhile and fairly simply to implement. I am happy to announce that a number of suggestions have been made and some of them have made it through to the draft 2016 best practices document which is scheduled to be published in Jan 2016 but is more likely to be nearer the end of Q1.

We’re also going to be working on improved reporting forms and data analysis and this will be disseminated via separate reports later in the year. Some changes are likely to be made to the administrative side of the scheme, but these are still under discussion and the outcome is not yet known.

I had been made aware of quite a substantial change that was to be announced at this meeting, but unfortunately due to some procedural and administrative issues, I am unable to make this announcement at the present time. However, it has been deemed important enough by the committee that a highly unusual step of arranging a further best practices committee meeting in 6 months’ time (April/May 2016) to discuss the

proposal in fine detail will be scheduled (I will of course provide a report after this event for publication here, on the web pages of the BCS DCSG, the official DCA journal, the DCA website and the DCA Energy Efficiency & Sustainability steering committee.)The DCA EE&S steering group is strongly supportive of the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) and has information on the endorser and participant routes to membership on the DCA website. The DCA is an endorser to the EUCOC.

The EUCOC is also a requirement for the DCA certification process and is a key element in the Greening Government ICT strategy, it also appears as a requirement item in the G Cloud 7 criteria and we understand the recent Crown Hosting Service tender documents.

Our view within the DCA, and in particular the EE&S group is that the EUCOC is here to stay and will increasingly be used as a procurement benchmark for both the public and private sectors. If you are involved in the data centre industry and are not an endorser you should takes steps to become one. If you run a datacentre, server room or anything that you keep computers, storage and network components in, you should download a copy of the EUCOC latest edition, and see if any of the best practices can be implemented in your facility. You can always look to engage with an EUCOC aware consultant to assist you.

After all, the EUCOC can help you recover capacity, reduce costs and optimise your data centre, what’s not to like?Become a participant to the EUCOC today!

There’s no ‘I’ in TEAM

By Kelly Edmond, Membership Executive, Data Centre Alliance.

AWAY from the usual fund raising charity golf days, silent auctions and black tie dinners the Data Centre Alliance wanted to do something a little bit different. For the first time we held the DCA Tough Mudder team challenge to raise money for charity.

What is Tough Mudder? Tough Mudder is a team-oriented 10-12 mile (18-20 km) obstacle course designed to test physical strength and mental grit. Tough Mudder is not a timed race but a team challenge that allows participants to experience the exhilaration of taking on a world-class obstacle course, which will test your endurance to the max, whilst you raise money for a great cause.

We entered a 9 man/woman team in this year’s challenge which took place on Saturday the 26th September in Winchester. The London South course involved 29 obstacles, and as a team we endured The Birth Canal, The Dead Ringer, The ‘Cry Baby’, The Liberator, Electroshock Therapy, The Artic Enema, The Mud Mile, Everest and more. And yes it all sounds as bad as it is!

The chosen charity very close to many hearts was ALZHEIMER’S RESEARCH UK. There are over 830,000 people in the UK living with dementia today and this number will increase as our population ages. Around every person with dementia are family members and friends, in fact 25 million of us in the UK know someone affected by dementia.

Research is the only answer. So the idea was to raise money for charity, raise the profile of the DCA, our industry, and the companies involved!

This year’s DCA Tough Mudder team, which I am so proud to have conquered the challenge with, include:Jason Holloway – Datacentre SolutionsHarry Pyant – KeysourceLiam Moore – DCProfessional Paul McDonald – DataCenterDynamicsNick Phillips – NG BaileyJames Davies – TelehouseBruce McKinnon – TelehousePaul Russell – Emerson Network Power

The build up to the event was spectacular with the support of friends, family, colleagues, and the industry. In Data Centre industry events alone we raised a total of £1,634.07! On the day of Tough Mudder you can imagine there was excitement in the air, with pumping music, men in tutu’s, the smell of coffee and more. Warm up done, energy drink downed, and the flag went off!

However, just less than 5 miles in I caused injury to both knees bringing the whole team to a halt, so walking it was. The countdown began as we got closer to the finish line, hauling each other over



walls, pushing each other through pitch black tunnels, dragging ourselves through the mud mile, and in my case having some of my teammates going as far as giving me ‘piggy backs’ when I couldn’t walk! That is pure team spirit. In the end, I completed 28 out of 29 obstacles, but would not have done any of it without the support of my teammates. You can see the outcome on our JustGiving page on www.justgiving.com/DCAKelly-Edmond and still donate as all funds go to Alzheimer’s Research UK.

With the success of doing Tough Mudder 2015 we as the DCA are planning a charity challenge every year!

If you would like to be involved in future to work together as a team, promote our industry, the chosen charity, your organisation and the DCA stay tuned for more information coming soon – or alternately you can contact the DCA at [email protected]

THERE ARE CURRENTLY several organisations working on behalf of the data centre sector that offer their own industry standards, each of which have made valuable in-roads towards promoting best practice.

The Uptime Institute has certified around 170 data centres under its tiered system, while The Green Grid has witnessed a widespread adoption of its PUE scoring. The European Commission set up the EU Code of Conduct to encourage best practice, whereas The Data Centre Alliance (DCA) offers data centre

owners and operators the opportunity to gain certification of their facility using an independent audit process. In addition, there are a number of other classifications and standards such as BSEN 50600 (which the DCA aligns with), TIA942 and the BICSI002-2014.

Whilst the work delivered by these organisations has had a positive effect, the industry has ultimately suffered due to a lack of transparent industry-wide standards that can be adopted by all stakeholders to assess the overall quality of any given

facility. As a result, the industry is rife with conflicting views and this confusion looks set to continue.

For example, data centre developers do not have a common set of standards to ask designers, builders and operators to adhere to. In addition, operators cannot lay claim to meeting a concrete set of industry standards when advertising their facilities. This means that those purchasing services naturally find it difficult to distinguish between data centres that are designed, built and critically; operated, to a high

Consistent and clear data centre standards will drive improved performance and informed choice for customers

The data centre sector continues to grow at a phenomenal rate, however a lack of consistent industry-wide standards is creating confusion for anyone trying to assess or compare the overall quality of individual facilities. Rob Elder, Director at Keysource, the critical environment specialists, calls for greater clarification.



standard and those that are not. At present, an organisation may choose to pay a professional to independently audit a facility, however any results are derived from only one particular consultant at one specific time. This is compounded by the service level requirements associated with managed or cloud service provision where customers are not simply buying data centre space.

In the current landscape, it is difficult for organisations to determine the suitability of a data centre or a service provider, and in many cases they just have to rely on what they are being told, which is obviously not the best approach. The Uptime Institute has made a big impact with its tiered system, however many providers are using it as a marketing ploy, and the Institute is now, understandably, having to clamp down on organisations that are exploiting it.

The Institute has led the way on certification, particularly in the case of resilience. However many customers request Tier III without knowing quite what it means. In reality, customers will have different availability, density, and performance requirements for different applications. Combined with modular data centre design and multiple tenant and hall fit out, an overall facility could be very different. This therefore highlights the need for a more flexible approach to how we design and certify data centres, especially when the increased Capex needed to achieve greater levels of resilience, such

as a certified Tier IV constructed facility, can be significant.

So what is the answer? Just to be clear, this is definitely not about developing new standards but rather helping to create some clarity and common understanding of the performance of data centres for all aspects of the industry.

An independent not for profit organisation, such as the Data Centre Alliance in the UK, is putting in place a framework to develop a consistent approach. Being funded by the industry, it also provides an opportunity for those who operate in this space to share their views and help shape this approach so that it works well in practice.

The approach being pursued by the Data Centre Alliance seems to be working, notwithstanding that at the moment there is much work to do and progress, and

adoption, can be slow. A key part of this approach is to ensure governance, scrutiny and transparency are applied not just when an organisation is being audited but that the very audits and technical standards used for certification are robust. By not creating new standards but utilising existing ones, the DCA is not claiming anything new. Instead, it is providing a comprehensive approach to the certification of the data centre as a whole and not just one part.

Another key benefit of the DCA approach is that it has been designed to be affordable. Whilst other certifications are, in some aspects, more detailed or technical, and we would still encourage customers in certain situations to consider these, the DCA certification model means it is accessible not just to a few large IT firms or operators but to end users and in particular the public sector. This will hopefully serve to generate widespread demand and adoption and protect the DCA certification from becoming simply a badge for a select few.

With the continued globalisation of the industry, prompted by the growth of new data centre markets, particularly in South America, Asia and the Middle East, the need for industry-wide standards to help align different regions is more important than ever. A greater level of transparency is required across the sector and it is up the entire industry to work together in a bid to achieve this important goal.

As a consultant since the beginning of 2015, I have been fortunate enough to be involved in a number of significant Data Centre projects already and in PTS that means not just scoping out the strategy and requirements for Data Centres, but seeing them through to operational readiness and handover. After that, we usually only get called in if there are capacity challenges or a need to re-evaluate a Data Centre’s very existence!

What is often missing from the repertoire of many other consultants is the operational experience of trying to keep the whole Data Centre system running at ‘optimal’ performance. There is a world of difference between building an energy-efficient Data Centre and continuing to run that Data Centre at peak efficiency one, two or even three years hence.

I looked up ‘optimal’ in the OED and arrived at the definition “Best or most favourable”. Note that it doesn’t say “lowest running costs”

or “highest capacity utilisation”, or even “most available”. Your ideal Data Centre may be all these things, but the reality is that running costs and management/business priorities often dictate which goals your organisation will strive for. Many organisations have never even considered what the goals are for their Data Centre and even fewer have ever written them down in a Data Centre strategy.

A goal that most organisations can relate to though, and would probably find favour in the harshest of trading conditions or economic climate, is the desire to keep operational costs as low as possible. Wouldn’t it be great if a Data Centre Manager had a set of guidelines that he/she could review each year and check that they are doing everything reasonable to keep costs down, while improving the sustainability of their Data Centre? This is exactly what the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (CoC) was designed to do, and it recognises the challenges of availability versus sustainability, which need not be mutually exclusive targets.Remember that all

By Stephen Bowes-Phipps, Senior Consultant, PTS Consulting.

Achieving optimal performance in the data centre – A european guide



organisations have different goals and different depths of pockets. A bank will spend hundreds of thousands of pounds building resiliency and redundancy into their Data Centre because a business manager can put a huge price ticket on even one minute of downtime. A university Data Centre Manager, however, may feel it is more important to run a slightly riskier level of architecture, but emphasise the lower cost and ‘greener’ Data Centre that this enables for its current and future student stakeholders. The canny Data Centre Manager will recognise the value in both – keeping the lights off, while keeping the IT constantly in play.

When I worked for the University of Hertfordshire, we decided that we wanted lower carbon costs, which emanated from lower operational costs that demonstrated a significant impact on budgets for teaching and learning. Our flagship Data Centre won three international awards for sustainability through best practice, saving at least £180,000 a year,

despite having a footprint of only 75m2. My personal guide to those savings and the 3rd party suppliers’ commitment for highly-efficient Data Centre projects came from the guidelines that are the CoC.

The CoC is not a management book; it is a set of guidelines that seek to achieve the greatest efficiency from the infrastructure and use of the Data Centre. This makes it very accessible, particularly when you are considering the requirements of Data Centre improvements or enhancements. Referencing the CoC in your Request For Proposals (RFP) or Invitation to Tender (ITT) not only saves time and effort for you, but is also a standard way of levelling the playing field between different suppliers – distinguishing between those that really understand the Data Centre against those that see it purely as another source of construction income. When was the last time you made being an “Endorser” of the CoC a pre-requisite of doing business with your Data Centre? Maybe next time you should.

Why we joined the EU Code of Conduct

By Gary Coates, Data Centre Manager, ServerHouse.

SERVERHOUSE has been providing Carrier Neutral data centre services from our complex in Fareham since 1998. We were very early to the market with our first dedicated 4,000 sq ft facility opening in 2001. During the early years Colocation and Data centre was a new market – most of our early customers had one choice and never ceased to be impressed by what we had to offer. We were able to run the data centre to suite our needs – consideration for the energy consumption, knowledge sharing, developed designs and standard were all but non-existent. We can now nostalgically look back at the mistakes we made in our infancy, the methods which have stood firm and kept the business growing and the small customers who have now built their own data centres.

Today’s market is very different, there are hundreds of Data centres promoting themselves throughout the UK, estate agents regard any industrial unit with more than 600kva of 3 phase to be a ‘potential data centre’ and the number of new entrants has been vast and unrelentingSome entrants have been badly burned by overspending on specification before they’re able to provide a useable facility and building away from connectivity hubs or even on flood plains...We have always been conscious that you must evolve with the market to stay ahead and you need to separate yourself from the crowd. We have evolved a great deal from where we were in 2001 and we have put time and money into the ServerHouse data centres to ensure what we offer today is fit for purpose colocation that provides excellent value for money for our clients without compromising on service and reliability.

When a data centre is newly built you have the luxury of all the current technological advances but as the market changes these soon become obsolete and you have to adapt and evolve to compete, to survive. A lot of what we offer today was a hard lesson; sometimes it was expensive or cost us a potential client, but some of it came very easily with guidance from the European Data centre code of conduct. (EU D CoC if you’re short on initialisms)The EU D CoC provides us with a European ‘standard’ which customers can recognise. The Uptime Institutes Tier rating system has been extensively miss-understood and manipulated by ill-informed

marketing departments. In many cases it has been poorly applied to the European market where land and energy prices are higher and electric and environmental standards different. It’s not commercially viable to replace your switchgear, UPS or cooling system with each technology evolution so a compromise has to be reached which both meets the needs of your business while benefiting from an understanding of the industry best practice.This is where we found the EU D CoC helped us; we were able to benefit from a wealth of knowledge and experience from data centres working in both near identical and also marginally different markets and countries.

We were able to understand more about the upcoming legislation – and help steer it. Unlike other measures of quality, standardisation or process it wasn’t a pass or fail, but a code of conduct. ServerHouse was able to apply the European Datacentre Code of Conduct where it could and understand where it wasn’t commercially, practically or otherwise viable. It essentially provides us with a rolling gap analysis on the product we offered. We found the Code of Conduct worked well to help infrastructure, management and finance staff understand the challenges we faced and to plan in works to upgrade our facilities.It worked well to demonstrate to our potential clients that we have a proactive and pragmatic approach to many of the key issues – Energy, Environment and compliance; it was a regional European standard.

Having learnt the hard way it was refreshing to share information from participants who faced similar challenges and also to hear from endorsers who had experience in servicing the data centre market and were able to better understand our business needs.Today the European Datacentre Code of Conduct is part of an entourage of policies, practices and standards we measure ourselves against to demonstrate to our customers that ServerHouse is well placed to offer an excellent product to our client base.We place it alongside our Data Centre Alliance membership and ISO27001 accreditation as a key part of our brand – the only thing we fail to understand is why so few operators are participating.



European Code of Conduct for Data Centres:Influence through engagement

By Jeremy Hartley, Managing Director, Dataracks.

THE EUROPEAN CODE OF CONDUCT for Data Centres (EUCoC) is an EU-wide voluntary initiative focussing on energy saving in data centre design and operation. Despite having existed since 2008, interest in the EUCoC has been relatively poor across the industry, with few manufacturers and suppliers endorsing it, and even fewer data centre operators signing up as participants.

The reasons for this are likely to vary from company-to-company and country-to-country, but a major stumbling block has been poor communication from the Joint Research Centre – the European Commission’s in house science service – about both the content and benefits of the EUCoC. This arms-length approach has been extremely frustrating for the industry, with little to no consultation on the content of the EUCoC resulting in somewhat disjointed guidelines which do not actually reflect current best practices.

Are ASHRAE standards relevant?The recent publication of a revised draft of the EUCoC brings into stark contrast the distance between the EUCoC and the industry. Where European data centres manufacturers and engineers – through the DCA – are increasingly using European standards and certifications, the EUCoC is still relying on ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers) standards.

Although these standards have recently been relaxed, they still lag behind the pace of change currently being seen in both technology and operational practices. They may have been suitable as a starting point at the code’s inception, but the differences between US and European climates, as well as the changing cooling requirements of IT equipment, mean that complying strictly with ASHRAE standards is both unnecessary and potentially very expensive.

The development of European – or even national – standards provides a much more cost-effective and relevant approach, and would allow the EUCoC to be updated as technology and equipment requirements change.

What’s the cost?As with the introduction of any new legislation, guidelines or best practices, there is a cost involved with meeting EUCoC recommendations. However, as reducing energy consumption is the primary goal of the programme, these capital and administrative costs need to be off-set against efficiency gains. The ROI may not be immediate, but the longer term gains offer real benefits for companies. There is also significant, but little publicised, European funding available for improving energy efficiency, and participating in the EUCoC certainly won’t harm your green credentials.

The DCA’s roleAs an industry body, the DCA cannot engage directly with the EUCoC, as it can be neither an endorser nor a participant. In contrast, DCA members are ideally placed to lead by example, adhering to the EUCoC themselves and suggesting enhancements to ensure that it is fit for purpose. This way, a delegation of like-minded DCA members might be able to influence revision of the EUCoC in a way that reflects the needs of the industry as a whole. Data centres can also be encouraged to operate according to the code’s fundamental principles through the DCA’s various

educational initiatives, providing long term benefits for the entire sector.

Before it’s too lateDespite being a voluntary programme at present, the industry’s ongoing failure to adopt the EUCoC could, in the long run, lead to new legislation forcing data centres to implement energy saving measures. Given that the current EUCoC recommendations seem to be drafted with little or no input from the industry, any future legislation could easily prove to be unnecessarily draconian or impractical. It is therefore better to proactively deal with energy usage in data centres before the tipping point is reached, as well as ensuring that the guidelines truly reflect industry best practices.

The DCA is the voice of the industry, and can help to provide a co-ordinated approach to reducing energy consumption, but individual members need to get involved with the EUCoC to help shape our future, before legislative measures force our hands.

To learn more about the Code of Conduct on Data Centres, visit:http://iet.jrc.ec.europa.eu/energyefficiency/ict-codes-conduct/data-centres-energy-efficiency.

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