2014 Year in review

Well, as its Christmas we get some time to chill out and relax, perhaps do some work or just sit and think about what comes next.

Before that though, I'd like to review this year as its been very exciting.

Back in Jan 14, we were requested to help out on a bid for a large UK based Telco to install cold aisle containment at 130+ sites, sadly after about a months work of work, the client decided to use its own in house team.

We were also frustrated by another potential client regarding the preparation of some management systems for ISO accreditation, we were a little too expensive, but our quotation included a lot of the work that wasn't included by the other parties, and would have to have been completed in house so all in all we were about right on the costing but headline costs in a competitive situation are key.

We spent two weeks in June cooped up in the UEL with the DCA and Green IT Amsterdam amongst others to prepare a bid for EU funding, which we found out in November has been accepted, so this project will commence in March 2015, more details closer to the launch date and project commencement.

I visited the US, well Texas actually in April to conduct a CEEDA assessment for ARM, Austin followed by two UK re-assessments for ARM Cambridge and St Andrews universities, both retaining their GOLD CEEDA's.
In November I was off to Sydney, Australia to undertake another re-assessment for Westpac and then a week later to visit Hong Kong to assess a data centre on behalf of one of the Utilities and their High Energy Efficiency pilot site.
Both of these have just been audited this week so I cannot reveal their award grades as yet, watch this space.

We've also been doing bits and pieces of work for ICEOTOPE, the liquid cooled server solution and we hope to do some more work next year.

So, next year, we'll be spending a lot of time on our EU project, still assessing data centres for CEEDA and the EUCOC and doing some ad-hoc work all based on energy efficiency for some other major clients.

As always we'll keep you up to date on this blog, our website and social media feeds.

Oh, almost forgot, we are in discussions with a few interested parties over a radical new project, this is close to being revealed, but not yet, not yet.

Q4 Update

There have been some changes to the schedule since our last update and we'll be covering those later.
Firstly, some updates on other news, we attended the CDCAP course in early September and we have been advised that our MD is now an official Certified Data Centre Auditing Professional or CDCAP.

We attended two meeting in Brussels in early October, the first was a DG Connect organised event to discuss the future of the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) which I think should have its short form changed from EUCoC to EUCoC DC (EE) in order to differentiate it from other EU Codes of Conduct.
Anyway, much was said, much was argued, but we await to see what will actually happen, what we can say is that it looks increasingly likely, given recent events in EU Climate Change & Energy  Policy that mandatory use of the EUCoC DC (EE) is definitely on the cards, when and how this will be achieved is still subject to review
We understand that in line with the UK, the French Government has recently required that all data centres providing services to their public services are required to be EUCoC DC (EE) which is why we've seen a large increase in the amount of data centres seeking participation status. There will also be a separation of the technical and administrative elements, the technical side will fall more into line with current standardisation bodies and will have liaison between the Green Grid, CENELEC, and ISO and representatives have already been appointed and I expect further news on this early next week (27th October 2014).
On the administrative side of things, we understand that there is work ongoing to present the application forms online with an online reporting tool but the backlog has now been addressed and new applicants should see a far quicker response to the application process.

Carbon3IT Ltd would also like to congratulate the Data Centre Alliance in being awarded "endorser",
I know that the DCA team are very keen to comply with the endorser obligations for trade bodies and indeed steps have been taken to survey the DCA membership, both participant organisations (data centre owners/operators) and endorsers (data centre supply chain/consultancies) to ensure that those organisations are complying with the EUCOC DC (EE) requirements.

On that note, I would like to remind participants and endorsers that you are required to provide evidence of your activities as follows:

Participants
Use the v5 reporting form to provide your last years energy and environmental data and progress against your action plan. this should be sent by the end of February 2015.

Endorsers
Should provide a statement on your "endorsing activities" for 2014, this should include promotion of the EUCOC DC (EE) on your website and other marketing material with links to the EUCOC pages.
Any events you have attended and any training courses or similar you may have run, again this should be provided as soon as possible after the end of 2014.

It is our opinion that the EUCoC DC (EE) does provide everything that any organisation that is seeking to reduce energy consumption and optimise its ICT could possibly need and we remain willing and able to provide insight on how organisations can use the EUCoC DC (EE) to achieve their goals.
You can contact us via our website Carbon3IT Ltd

We've also been busy with our CEEDA activities, conducting one re-assessment and taking discovery calls for new entrants.
We have 3 re-assessments to carry out in Sydney in early November following by a stint at DCD London and then a potential assessment in Hong Kong.

We'll also be attending a HPC event in Coventry in early December, which will probably be our last conference of the year before the Christmas season kicks in, we've been invited to two Christmas  Parties.

So far the calendar for 2015 looks busy with potential trips to South America and Europe.

We may have some exciting news for our next update which will probably be written in Australia.

Finally, we have been working with our partners ICEOTOPE on various things and we can advise that the official launch of the new product will be at Supercomputing in New Orleans in Mid November more info here and their details here and here

ICEOTOPE are still offering free trials of the technology to eligible organisations, so please contact us directly to sort out a trial unit with some engineering support to get the best results.

Until next time.....