Following on from our previous blog posts, the workshop event brite page is now up and running, you can find it on this EUCOC Participant Workshops.
We've decided on 3 dates as follows:
London, to be held at Intellect on the 28th March and 11th April
Manchester to be held at the Manchester Conference Centre on the 4th April
Places are limited to 10 delegates per workshop.
You'll need to bring your laptop and be armed with some info about YOUR data centre as we will be going through the entire application form and filling it in with the information that is required by the reviewer.
Wednesday, 13 February 2013
Monday, 4 February 2013
The Costs of EUCOC
I'm often asked about the costs of participating in the EUCOC, so I decided to get things down on paper (well in this blog anyway).
With the EUCOC, it costs nothing to submit an application to the EC JRC team to get your Data Centre listed as a participant to the code, however the application form can be a tad tricky if you've never seen one before and if you don't have the required information to hand, this adds time mostly internal.
From my estimates it will take an internal resource about a week (not cumulative) to gather together all the info required to submit the form, it can take up to 6 weeks to ask questions of the facilities guys, the IT guys and the IT director.
Filling out the form once you've gathered all the info will probably take about a day.
So, using a conservative £250 per day of internal resource cost, you looking at least £1500 (6 x £250) just to gather and submit the information and that is an absolute minimum.
So, how to minimise the costs of making a EUCOC application and ensure that it will not get rejected due to a lack of information (one the biggest rejection points is people telling the EC JRC that certain elements of the best practice have been implemented but not actually telling us how)?
Well, the obvious best way is to get somebody within your organisation trained up specifically in energy efficiency skills from various Data Centre training outfits, such as DCD and C-Net, this will cost approximately another £1000 on top of the internal resource costs.
But, here at Carbon3IT Ltd we think that a better way to help would be to run a workshop that looks at the specific things you'll need to complete an application, and to provide application assistance through a follow up visit on site (if taken) so we've partnered with Concurrent Thinking Ltd to develop a EUCOC workshop which will be held in London on the 28th March and 11th April and in Manchester on the 4th April.
The costs of the workshop is £495+ VAT and we'll be releasing the booking form (via eventbrite) shortly
We're restricted these events to 10 delegates and there is special pricing available for the early birds (20% off), if you'd like the discount code and for further information please contact us on info@carbon3it.com.
The workshop will take you through each element of the EUCOC Application form, and you'll be safe in the knowledge that your form will totally compliant to the requirements of the EUCOC and you'll hear tips and tricks to minimise energy consumption in your data centre, whats not to like?
The course is aimed at anyone who has a data centre and wants to reduce energy consumption, it will also be suitable for any organisation that is intending to provide services to G-Cloud or services to the public sector, this is due to HMG endorsing the EUCOC (See separate Blog Post), this means that Govt will be seeking participation for all data centres that will be providing new services from April 2014.
As LOCOG put it in the summer before the London 2012 Olympics, get ahead of the game(s), get your data centre(s) approved as EUCOC participants before you need to.
With the EUCOC, it costs nothing to submit an application to the EC JRC team to get your Data Centre listed as a participant to the code, however the application form can be a tad tricky if you've never seen one before and if you don't have the required information to hand, this adds time mostly internal.
From my estimates it will take an internal resource about a week (not cumulative) to gather together all the info required to submit the form, it can take up to 6 weeks to ask questions of the facilities guys, the IT guys and the IT director.
Filling out the form once you've gathered all the info will probably take about a day.
So, using a conservative £250 per day of internal resource cost, you looking at least £1500 (6 x £250) just to gather and submit the information and that is an absolute minimum.
So, how to minimise the costs of making a EUCOC application and ensure that it will not get rejected due to a lack of information (one the biggest rejection points is people telling the EC JRC that certain elements of the best practice have been implemented but not actually telling us how)?
Well, the obvious best way is to get somebody within your organisation trained up specifically in energy efficiency skills from various Data Centre training outfits, such as DCD and C-Net, this will cost approximately another £1000 on top of the internal resource costs.
But, here at Carbon3IT Ltd we think that a better way to help would be to run a workshop that looks at the specific things you'll need to complete an application, and to provide application assistance through a follow up visit on site (if taken) so we've partnered with Concurrent Thinking Ltd to develop a EUCOC workshop which will be held in London on the 28th March and 11th April and in Manchester on the 4th April.
The costs of the workshop is £495+ VAT and we'll be releasing the booking form (via eventbrite) shortly
We're restricted these events to 10 delegates and there is special pricing available for the early birds (20% off), if you'd like the discount code and for further information please contact us on info@carbon3it.com.
The workshop will take you through each element of the EUCOC Application form, and you'll be safe in the knowledge that your form will totally compliant to the requirements of the EUCOC and you'll hear tips and tricks to minimise energy consumption in your data centre, whats not to like?
The course is aimed at anyone who has a data centre and wants to reduce energy consumption, it will also be suitable for any organisation that is intending to provide services to G-Cloud or services to the public sector, this is due to HMG endorsing the EUCOC (See separate Blog Post), this means that Govt will be seeking participation for all data centres that will be providing new services from April 2014.
As LOCOG put it in the summer before the London 2012 Olympics, get ahead of the game(s), get your data centre(s) approved as EUCOC participants before you need to.
Friday, 1 February 2013
GDU, Cloud Expo, & GHG Protocol Update
Time for our weekly update.
Its been a busy week and I'll deal with it in order, firstly on Monday I was invited to give a very brief presentation to the Green Delivery Unit (which is a group set up by the UK Government to deliver the "Greening Government ICT Strategy") on the subject of the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres Energy Efficiency.
The strategy states that all government departments will be endorsers to the code by April 2013 and participants to the code for all new services delivered by a Data Centre or cooled server room from April 2014 and they wanted to get a handle on what this actually means.
We were very please to advise them that as endorsers they are required to promote the code as follows (extracted from the endorser guidelines (available here)
Endorsers Commitment
General Principles:
1. Organisations eligible to become Endorsers include:
• Vendors
• Consultancies (design, engineering, maintenance and service companies)
• Utilities
• Customers of data centre services
• Industry Associations/Standards bodies (e.g. ASHRAE, BCS, national ICT industry
associations).
• Educational institutions
2. They are expected to utilise the Code of Conduct in order the develop products, solutions
and programmes to enable data centre owners and operators to meet the goals and
expectations of the Code of Conduct.
3. Furthermore, some organisations that intervene in some aspect of the design, building or
operation of data centres may take actions which contribute to the overall Code of Conduct
goals of improving the energy efficiency of data centres. The nature of these actions will of
course be dependent upon on the organisation's activities, for instance;
• a manufacturer of IT or air-conditioner components might develop specific material to
help raise user awareness of energy efficiency issues, or might introduce or encourage
use of high efficiency products
• engineering consultancies might develop specific guidelines (based on the list of best
practices) to ensure that energy consumption is taken into account in the design
process
• a trade association might develop an "Energy Efficiency Charter"
• a training or educational institution might emphasise and extend the treatment of
energy efficiency
• an electricity company could instigate a specific Data Centre Demand Side
Management programme
• Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) might develop financing instruments adapted to
Data Centres
4. Organisations that support the aims of the Code of Conduct and endeavour to persuade
their clients, suppliers or members to sign the Code of Conduct and commit to some of the
above actions may sign up as Endorsers of the Code of Conduct.
Code of Conduct on Data Centres – Endorser Guidelines -- Version 2.0, 20 November 2009
7
5. The Code of Conduct recognises the contribution to be made by Endorsers such as
manufacturers, consultants or industry bodies.
Best practice commitments for customers of data centre services;
1. Promote best practice and procurement standards
2. Use Code of Conduct participant status and best practice adoption as part of
procurement processes
3. Promote the Code of Conduct
4. Promote the Code of Conduct best practices
5. Support Research Development & Delivery
6. Consider and campaign for standardised international metrics and standards.
So what does this mean for those organisations that are providing or thinking of providing data centre or cloud services to UK public sector bodies, well in a nutshell, you'd better get ready to become a participant to the EU Code of Conduct, it is very likely and in fact is already an item on the G-Cloud framework (albeit one that is not a determining criteria) that service providers will need to be participants. Bear in mind though that the EUCOC is still a voluntary programme and other determining criteria may apply, one thing that Government is considering is the use of the BCS CEEDA award to determine the energy efficiency status of a data centre more information here.
The CEEDA award is given to data centres that have been externally assessed and audited in a two stage process, the assessment covers a portion of the EUCOC and proves that energy efficiency measures have been witnessed to be in place within the facility.
So, consider the above to have been a "heads up" and my advice is to get ahead of the game.
Next, we visited the Cloud Expo Europe exhibition at Olympia, I wasn't expecting to see so many data centre operators on site so I took the opportunity to speak to them about energy efficiency in general and the EUCOC and CEEDA specifically, it was refreshing to see that all of them were considering participation or undertaking a CEEDA assessment in the next year, so the message is obviously getting out, begs the question why aren't all data centres signing up to these programmes, some must be running scared as they either haven't installed or implemented the best practices or they operate in such a bubble that the programmes aren't on their radars, and that's probably worse.
I managed to get invited to a few after show parties so a few drinks were consumed.
Last night I received a email advising that the latest revision of the GHG Protocol ICT sector guidance has been released for public comment, Carbon3IT Ltd are on the Stakeholder Advisory Group and through our work with the BCS DCSG have made comments on the Cloud and Data Centre chapters, the full guidance document can be downloaded from here
So that's been our week, as usual we've been accumulating knowledge and networking with our peers, I'd like to thank all the people I met at the Cloud Expo Europe, please do get in touch with us on info@carbon3it.com or visit our website and use the contact page if you need any further assitance on anything #greenit.
We've got a few things that we need to catch up on over the weekend so we'll be busy but we love it.
Until next time.....
Its been a busy week and I'll deal with it in order, firstly on Monday I was invited to give a very brief presentation to the Green Delivery Unit (which is a group set up by the UK Government to deliver the "Greening Government ICT Strategy") on the subject of the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres Energy Efficiency.
The strategy states that all government departments will be endorsers to the code by April 2013 and participants to the code for all new services delivered by a Data Centre or cooled server room from April 2014 and they wanted to get a handle on what this actually means.
We were very please to advise them that as endorsers they are required to promote the code as follows (extracted from the endorser guidelines (available here)
Endorsers Commitment
General Principles:
1. Organisations eligible to become Endorsers include:
• Vendors
• Consultancies (design, engineering, maintenance and service companies)
• Utilities
• Customers of data centre services
• Industry Associations/Standards bodies (e.g. ASHRAE, BCS, national ICT industry
associations).
• Educational institutions
2. They are expected to utilise the Code of Conduct in order the develop products, solutions
and programmes to enable data centre owners and operators to meet the goals and
expectations of the Code of Conduct.
3. Furthermore, some organisations that intervene in some aspect of the design, building or
operation of data centres may take actions which contribute to the overall Code of Conduct
goals of improving the energy efficiency of data centres. The nature of these actions will of
course be dependent upon on the organisation's activities, for instance;
• a manufacturer of IT or air-conditioner components might develop specific material to
help raise user awareness of energy efficiency issues, or might introduce or encourage
use of high efficiency products
• engineering consultancies might develop specific guidelines (based on the list of best
practices) to ensure that energy consumption is taken into account in the design
process
• a trade association might develop an "Energy Efficiency Charter"
• a training or educational institution might emphasise and extend the treatment of
energy efficiency
• an electricity company could instigate a specific Data Centre Demand Side
Management programme
• Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) might develop financing instruments adapted to
Data Centres
4. Organisations that support the aims of the Code of Conduct and endeavour to persuade
their clients, suppliers or members to sign the Code of Conduct and commit to some of the
above actions may sign up as Endorsers of the Code of Conduct.
Code of Conduct on Data Centres – Endorser Guidelines -- Version 2.0, 20 November 2009
7
5. The Code of Conduct recognises the contribution to be made by Endorsers such as
manufacturers, consultants or industry bodies.
Best practice commitments for customers of data centre services;
1. Promote best practice and procurement standards
2. Use Code of Conduct participant status and best practice adoption as part of
procurement processes
3. Promote the Code of Conduct
4. Promote the Code of Conduct best practices
5. Support Research Development & Delivery
6. Consider and campaign for standardised international metrics and standards.
So what does this mean for those organisations that are providing or thinking of providing data centre or cloud services to UK public sector bodies, well in a nutshell, you'd better get ready to become a participant to the EU Code of Conduct, it is very likely and in fact is already an item on the G-Cloud framework (albeit one that is not a determining criteria) that service providers will need to be participants. Bear in mind though that the EUCOC is still a voluntary programme and other determining criteria may apply, one thing that Government is considering is the use of the BCS CEEDA award to determine the energy efficiency status of a data centre more information here.
The CEEDA award is given to data centres that have been externally assessed and audited in a two stage process, the assessment covers a portion of the EUCOC and proves that energy efficiency measures have been witnessed to be in place within the facility.
So, consider the above to have been a "heads up" and my advice is to get ahead of the game.
Next, we visited the Cloud Expo Europe exhibition at Olympia, I wasn't expecting to see so many data centre operators on site so I took the opportunity to speak to them about energy efficiency in general and the EUCOC and CEEDA specifically, it was refreshing to see that all of them were considering participation or undertaking a CEEDA assessment in the next year, so the message is obviously getting out, begs the question why aren't all data centres signing up to these programmes, some must be running scared as they either haven't installed or implemented the best practices or they operate in such a bubble that the programmes aren't on their radars, and that's probably worse.
I managed to get invited to a few after show parties so a few drinks were consumed.
Last night I received a email advising that the latest revision of the GHG Protocol ICT sector guidance has been released for public comment, Carbon3IT Ltd are on the Stakeholder Advisory Group and through our work with the BCS DCSG have made comments on the Cloud and Data Centre chapters, the full guidance document can be downloaded from here
So that's been our week, as usual we've been accumulating knowledge and networking with our peers, I'd like to thank all the people I met at the Cloud Expo Europe, please do get in touch with us on info@carbon3it.com or visit our website and use the contact page if you need any further assitance on anything #greenit.
We've got a few things that we need to catch up on over the weekend so we'll be busy but we love it.
Until next time.....
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