Well, they say that the devil makes work for idle hands so you can assume that we've been very busy, seeing as its over 9 months since we last posted, so we need to give you an update!
In our last post we spoke a little bit about Brexit, well, as expected its turned out to be a little more complex than most people thought, the current situation is that the UK is being run by the very people that promoted it, and even they cant find a way through. We reserve further comment until the situation becomes a little clearer.
So, what have we been up to?
It makes sense to list our current projects (where we are not bound by NDA's!)
FT NHSD GP IT Futures Project
Towards the end of last year we were asked to review the list of data centre standards applicable to the NHS Hosting for various projects, we consolidated this list down from over 500 individual points to the use of international standards, specifically the EN50600 series of Data Centre Design, Build and Operate standards developed by industry professionals over the last 7 years and a few others.
As a result of this successful project we were asked to assist in the Market Engagement and Assurance element of a new NHSD tender for GP IT Hosting Services, this work continues.
CATALYST Project
The EU Funded Catalyst Project www.project-catalyst.eu aspires to turn data centres into flexible multi-energy hubs,
which can sustain investments in renewable energy sources and energy
efficiency. Leveraging on results of past projects, CATALYST will adapt,
scale up, deploy and validate an innovative technological and business
framework that enables data centres to offer a range of mutualized
energy flexibility services to both electricity and heat grids, while
simultaneously increasing their own resiliency to energy supply.
We have been retained as in-house consultants by www.greenitamsterdam.nl to assist Green IT Amsterdam to deliver their project elements which are, to play an active
role in defining innovative business models, designing the impact
creation strategy, and lead the establishment of the Green Data
Centres stakeholder Group so as to share information on environmentally
sustainable data centres and foster knowledge and experience exchange.
In addition, we will be responsible for assessing the CATALYST framework
and introducing the CATALYST Green DC Assessment toolkit which will
offer support services to data centre operators and developers,
certification bodies and other stakeholders to identify, measure and
assess relevant KPIs and metrics in a modular, structured and organized
way.
This project continues and is scheduled to end in September 2020.
As part of this project, our MD has been travelling widely across the EU and beyond, and expects to do a lot of travel for the next 11 months, so far this year, he has been to Oslo, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Poznan, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Brussels and Bangalore, India on behalf of the project and has trips to scheduled to Milan, Dublin, Stockholm for the rest of 2019, with occasional trips to Amsterdam for project updates, next years calendar has yet to be scheduled but keep on eye on the @catalyst-dc and @carbon3it twitter feeds for news. We'd like to invite all followers to our next CATALYST Green Data Centres - Stakeholder Group event taking place in Dublin, Ireland on the 20th November full details and registration can be found on the http://project-catalyst.eu/events-and-news/ page, where other information on the project can be found.
CEEDA
Its been a relatively quiet year for CEEDA with only 2 assessments taking place, these were the coolDC Lincoln Discovery Centre, which was the "operate" element of a CEEDA design and operate assessment, and one in Spain (which is covered by an NDA) both are in the final stages of reporting and all will be revealed at the DCD London event in early November, you can register for the event here https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/conferences/london/2019/
We'll have 2 speaking slots at this years conference, one has yet to be finalised and one on the "10years of CEEDA", Recommendations and Insights from the field" so register to attend!
We have 3 re-assessments taking place in 2020, some held over from 2019 due to operational issues, these are in Germany, Gibraltar, and Scotland, and a new client in Saudi Arabia. We understand from DCD that there will be a greater push on the CEEDA product moving forward, this is largely due to the climate emergency and the dual aspect of ICT globally, the first to mitigate the impact of ICT on the environment itself and the use of ICT system to monitor, predict and mitgate other aspects of the emergency. We are working very closely with DCD on this topic.
We've also been invited to judge this years DCD Awards and we are currently looking through the submissions for our particular category, you'll have to wait until the 5th December to hear the final award winners!
Training
We are delivering some ad-hoc training on "energy and cost management in data centres" which is an old course no longer carried by the original supplier, but our client has specifically asked us to deliver it, based on our industry knowledge and connection in the industry, but also because we'll be visiting their DC and pointing out where potential energy savings can be made, we'll report back once we've delivered the training (late Oct)
ISOs
We provide assistance in the developement of ISO management systems, specifcially in the data centre field, namely ISO9001, 14001, 22301, 27001, 45001 & 50001,
Our Operations Director has recently completed the NEBOSH General Certificate in Health and Safety and is awaiting the results.
We have been providing assistance to a local DC for ISO50001/ESOS.
Standards
We still continue our work with the global standards bodies, and have recently attended the BSI TCT7/3 group, been seconded to the TCT7/3/1 group working on a revamped EN50600-4-X standard and presented at the JCG - GDC TC215 committee on the CATALYST project (as part of our work!)
Speaking Engagements
We've spoken at a number of events this year on behalf of the CATALYST project and the EUCOC, mostly at https://datacenter-forum.com/
events in Oslo, Helsinki, and Copenhagen, but have also scheduled for Stockholm in late November.
You'll also see us at DCD London, DC Ireland and potentially in Copenhagen and Berlin, but we're in the early stages and nothing is confirmed yet.
So, in summary, we said last year in our last post that we felt that this year was going to be special as so it has proved.
We still continue to provide the following services and one of our major tasks over the coming months is to undertake a serious revamp of our website, so look out for that!
EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres Review and Preparation
CEEDA assessements (with our DCD partners)
ISO Management Systems for ISO9001/14001/22301/27001/45001 and 50001
Data Centre Audits (with our M&E partners)
Data Centre Training (on site, and tailored to your requirements)
Data Centre Support Services - Compliance
Special Services, if you have a problem that needs solving, let us know,
through our wide network of consultants, supply chains and operators
we've probably come across the problem before and therefore may be able
to help.
Until next time (and we promise it wont be 10 months!!)
