Data Centre World and April Update

Firstly, an apology is in order, we created an April Fool post based upon the EUCOC becoming mandatory in April 2017 and this was published on the 9th April due to a scheduling error.
We had some feedback, but we thought that our spokesman Mr Alfred Phool would have been sufficient to alert readers, it seems not.

We spent the last week in London, firstly at the UEL to attend a few DCA meetings, namely the Certification steering committee, the Energy Efficiency committee and finally the Board of Governors meeting, this was followed later in the evening by a EURECA project meeting and dinner.

Thanks to Steve and Kelly of the DCA for letting me stay at their apartment opposite the Excel Arena on the Monday/Tuesday. This in return for helping out with the stand layout and for helping out on both days of the event Data Centre World.

I've been to a few events and we like this one! There are few occasions in the year when the industry can get together and chew the cud, but this is most definately one of the best.

If you've not been, this event takes over 3 halls at the Excel Arena London and includes Cloud and IoT expo's, always worth a visit and best of all its free to attend.

One of the highlights this year was the construction of a fully working "green data centre" built by one of our partners with assistance from many of the supply chain.

Our MD was interviewed by Brighttalk on a host of topics ranging from future trends in the data centre to green data centres and we'll post the video once its been published.(perhaps!)

Ok, so whats on the agenda for the next couple of weeks?

Next week the MD is out in London for a "market warming" event, we're not quite sure what this will entail but the end client is a potential EURECA client so, watch this space.
The following day is a BSI meeting, lots to discuss at that one.
Provisionally booked for the next day is a CEEDA update meeting with the delivery partner.
One the following day there is a SFL meeting, then its back to the office to catch up with outstanding actions arising from the days out.

The following week, we start a standards project with a new client in the Midlands, this client is taking over a new site and we'll be providing a full management systems suite, including all of the EURECA projects Magnificent 7 listing. We've also got something else in preparation for them, and we'll be reporting on this in future posts.

We're also attending a SMART TO FUTURE Cities event on the Tuesday/Wednesday prior to our flight to Austin Texas to conduct a CEEDA assessment.

When we return we have a quick visit and then its off to Scotland for a few days, closely followed by a quick trip to Dublin, these are both EURECA project trips.

If you're wondering what we're doing this weekend, well we're finalising our proposal for Project Spagetti, reviewing lots of EUCOC applications for the DataCloud Congress award on June 7th and some new applications.

Well thats it for now, we'll be updating later in May after all our travels.

Until, next time...be energy efficient

April Fool

Our previous blogpost was in fact an April Fool, it was supposed to have been posted on the 1st April but the automatic scheduling clearly didn't work.
So, we apologise.

EU Code of Conduct to become MANDATORY in April 2017!

We understand from our sources within the EU and EU-JRC that discussions are underway to make the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) and participation to the scheme MANDATORY for all public sector organisations throughtout the EU member states from April 2017.

This will also include 3rd party data centres providing hosting or cloud services to public sector organisations, so it is possible that many private data centre companies will also be included in the legislation and will be required to review and audit their facilities and prepare EUCOC participant application forms.

Our spokesman Alfred Phool states "Whilst many organisations providing data centre services and colocation/cloud services to the public sector are already EUCOC participants, there are a great many that are not, and this includes the public sector organisations themselves, this despite the previous UK governments committment via the "Greening ICT strategy of 2012" to have all central government departments registered as "endorsers" to the scheme (and thereby requiring 3rd parties to be participants) by 2013 AND for their internal systems to be participants by April 2014 (this commitment for all NEW services).

Currently, just 5 UK Central Goverment departments are included in the EUCOC scheme.

Whilst the UK Government has a "cloud first" strategy, the current G CLOUD framework does include the requirement for cloud suppliers to be hosted in EUCOC participant data centres, unfortunately, the CCS does not "police" and verify supplier statements, this means that many public sector services being provided by Cloud operators are actually not being hosted in EUCOC registered data centres.

We have not run the numbers yet to check how many companies on the G Cloud are in breach of their contractual commitments, but this exercise is underway and we hope to report soon.

The legislation is currently being drafted by the EU Energy Directorate and it is expected that there will be a period of "grace" to allow public sector organisations to implement the EUCOC into data centre operations, especially the reporting aspects (energy reporting) and to advise some 3rd party facilities to adopt the EUCOC.

Carbon3IT Ltd believes that this legislation is long overdue as the EUCOC has been in circulation since 2008 and currently only has 115 participants representing just over 300 sites across Europe and some of the 115 are actually based in non EU countries.

Mr Phool beleives that the mandation of the EUCOC can only reap benefits for the public sector in creating reviews and auditing of current infrastructures that may allow the production of cast iron business cases for the transition to newer energy efficient data centres both internally and externally