We are delighted to announce we have rescheduled the PEDCA Workshops originally to be held at the cancelled DCD Warsaw Conference.

The agenda remains unchanged and registration is now open!

You can find the details of the workshop as well as registration under ‘Event Calendar’ HERE

If you have any questions or queries please email [email protected]

We look forward to seeing you in September!

Dear All,

We regret to inform you that due to being informed this week of an international heads of state summit, DCD have been forced to cancel their Warsaw event on 4^th June, which means we will unfortunately be unable to run our planned PEDCA workshops.

 According to Polish authorities the Sheraton hotel will be at the centre of two days of international summit proceedings involving a dozen heads of state including Barak Obama. Given heightened security measures in the area, we have been warned that access to the venue might be limited or blocked for some periods of the 4^th June making it difficult, if not impossible, to get in and out of the conference venue.

 At the moment we are currently looking at options to reschedule this, and we will keep you updated throughout. We appreciate your support and we look forward to the opportunity of meeting you in the near future.

Once rescheduled, if you are interested in attending the PEDCA workshops please can you email [email protected] and we will contact you to ensure that your place will be reserved. 

Best regards

The DCA Team

This is a unique opportunity to join one of the world’s fastest growing and rewarding industry sectors! 

You will have:

• A genuine desire to learn
• A passionate interest in new technologies
• A desire for a rewarding and long-term career
• A willingness to learn how to work in a mission critical environment

If the above describes you we will provide you with:

• An introduction to the fast expanding data centre industry
• An introduction to current trends and best practice
• An awareness of a typical data centre and its role within society

A Data Centre Alliance Certificate of attendance will be provided which will endorse you for interview or selection.

Please click HERE for the programme

Registration is now FULL. However, you can register to put your name forward for future events of this type.

DCA Meeting Report – European Commission DG CONNECT– Brussels, 1st April 2014

The DCA attended and was represented at a workshop organised by DG CONNECT entitled “Environmentally Sound Data Centres: Policy Measures, Metrics and Methodologies”. The purpose of the workshop was to discuss the following questions:

·        Is there a lack of Environmental policy measures and publicly available data on data centres?

·        Are existing measures capturing the key elements of the methodological framework appropriately and is there a need for adaption of their methodological basis?

·        Is there a need of new metrics or harmonisation of existing ones on the environmental impact of data centres?

·        Should the data centre, in the context of environmental policy measures/methodologies/metrics, be approached as a system or should it be approached as its individual components?

The Commission presented the state of play of GHG targets and how data centres and ICT needs to play greater role in reducing emissions. The commission indicated a need for data centres to promote renewables or “green” power buying choices based on energy mix, including the carbon credentials of different types of renewables.

It was not clear on the scope policy measures should apply to – confusion about the different data centre types, and the complexity of dealing with different working models and layers clouded the issues.

The EU code of Conduct was strongly supported by the DCA at the workshop as an opportunity that should be leveraged, especially the “minimum” expected practices within the code that could and perhaps should, be made mandatory. However the DCA recognises the need to improve aspects of the code’s process, dissemination, endorsement and participation.

One area agreed upon was the need for widening education and training of energy efficiency for operators, especially the many thousands of small and medium sized data centres and server rooms within the EU.

A full “official” report will be released by the EU commission soon (and will be posted here), but In summary –there is added urgency to act on DCA Certifications whilst supporting the harmonisation efforts at ISO/IEC and addressing the weaknesses and capitalising on the strengths of the EU Code of Conduct. Many thanks to DCA SVP Martin Essig MD of Telecity GmbH who kindly volunteered to join me in supporting the workshop.

This is a unique opportunity to join one of the world’s fastest growing and rewarding industry sectors! 

You will have:

• A genuine desire to learn
• A passionate interest in new technologies
• A desire for a rewarding and long-term career
• A willingness to learn how to work in a mission critical environment

If the above describes you we will provide you with:

• An introduction to the fast expanding data centre industry
• An introduction to current trends and best practice
• An awareness of a typical data centre and its role within society

A Data Centre Alliance Certificate of attendance will be provided which will endorse you for interview or selection.

Please click HERE for the programme

EU Calls for Stakeholder Participation in European Energy Efficiency Standards for ICT Hardware.

Headway is being made for possible future EU legislation to govern the sale of ICT hardware such as servers, storage and networking equipment in Europe. The European Commission launched its preparatory study of these products in June 2013 to verify the need for an Ecodesign measure, which would set minimum energy efficiency requirements. Another potential outcome of the study could feature mandatory energy efficiency labelling for rating of the products, similar to that already applied to domestic appliances.

The European Parliament has adopted a Commission proposal for a Directive on establishing a framework for setting Ecodesign requirements for all energy-related products in the residential, tertiary, and industrial sectors.

The four main objectives of the Ecodesign Directive are to:

· Ensure the free movement of energy-related products within the EU

· Improve the overall environmental performance of these products and thereby protect the environment

· Contribute to the security of energy supply and enhance the competitiveness of the EU economy

· Preserve the interests of industry, consumers, and other stakeholders.

The DG ENTR Lot 9 preparatory study on Enterprise servers, data storage and networking equipment held its first stakeholder meeting on 5 December 2013. It will consider options for Minimum Energy Performance Standards and for energy labelling of this equipment.

The official website can be found here: http://www.ecodesign-servers.eu/home

Clearly, any proposed legislation could affect how data centres are rated for energy efficiency. Anyone with a specific interest should register as stakeholders through the official website: http://www.ecodesign-servers.eu/register-as-a-stakeholder

DCA attends DCD Converged, London and presents Project PEDCA

The DCA was present at DCD Converged conference and exhibition at Londons Excel. With over 2,000 visitors, over 100 stands and 6 halls with over 125 speakers of conference content – the whole two days were truly awesome!

The DCA’s Simon Campbell-Whyte presented the PAN European Data Centre Academy (PEDCA) project which aims to establish a training and research action plan for the industry. Simon reiterated the importance to the industry of participating in the publically funded PEDCA survey which can be found at ww.data-central.org. Participants will gain visibility of the results in real-time and of course the final analysis will be available via the EU Commission.

In another hall, DCA SVP Matt Pumfrey, CEO of Smart Carbon Control discussed the industry’s need to respond to customer’s and stakeholders demands for more granular and more reliable data centre information.

Emily Spink of ARC:MC and Chair of the BIM4DC group presented the implications of BIM to the data centre industry and the indications shown by the DCA BIM survey. The survey can be found at www.data-central.org where the BIM group is also seeking participants.

Dr Jon Summers of University of Leeds, chaired the conference’s data centre cooling track and had the honour of introducing Dr Jonathan Koomey’s talk.

The DCA’s Dr Rabih Bashroush of University of East London related the impact of server under utilisation upon data centre infrastructures in his talk on day 2.

And lastly, Simon Campbell-Whyte chaired the final afternoon of the BICSI data centre standards stream in Hall 6, which featured a lively panel debate featuring Paolo Bertoldi of the EU Commission, Greg Sherry EU Director of BICSI and Stephen Kay Vice Chair for standards at BCS Health.

On behalf of the Data Centre Alliance we’d like to thank and congratulate the organisers for putting on such a breathtaking event, and we look forward to taking part again next year.

With Ireland being home to three of Europe’s largest data centres, it’s no surprise the second Data Centre Ireland Conference held in Dublin was even bigger and better than last year’s inaugural event with over 50 sponsoring companies and over 750 delegates through the doors over the two days.

Having played a part last year, the DCA was present again this year, this time along with The PEDCA project and many of its European participants visiting the conference for the first time. The DCA sponsored the evening drinks and networking evening with lots of interest and discussion about the benefits of an Ireland based DCA chapter. This will certainly be more of a focus of the DCA going forward; already with over 200 organisations supporting the non-profit organisation, the DCA is establishing many members across many countries, in fact around half the current members are non-UK, so as soon as there is a sustainable number in any one country the establishment of an appropriate non-commercial entity can take place, so that national as well as international matters can be properly organised and represented.

The PEDCA project featured in the programme with Simon Campbell-Whyte, Executive Director of the DCA, giving a presentation describing the project’s aims and objectives. Following this Mark Acton, Norland’s Product Director and Chair of the EU Code of Conduct Technical Committee, chaired a panel session where topics and questions on the project were discussed with a PEDCA panel comprising of Drs. Frank Verhagen of Cerios Green, Maikel Bouricius of Green IT Amsterdam Region, Dr Jon Summers of University of Leeds and Simon Campbell-Whyte of DCA.

The two day exhibition featured two full conference programmes with a wide spectrum of talks covering many aspects of the data centre industry. Simon Campbell-Whyte of the DCA chaired one of the morning sessions featuring Steve Strange of Anixter reporting on the redefinition of the data centre they see, Prof Ian Bitterlin’s Green Grid talk on ISO standards, HP’s talk on data centre energy efficiency and Ray Lloyd of IBM sharing his very interesting research on improving efficiency in legacy data centres.

The conference organisers worked hard to ensure the event ran smoothly so a big thanks to Hugh Robinson and his team for what was a great event which promises to be even better next year.

The PAN-European Data Centre Academy Project requires your help and insight to help define the training, education and research needs of the industry.

 No iPad giveaway for this non-commercial survey, much better than that – a promise to share the results with you both on completion of the survey in real time, and when the full analysis is done.

 The PEDCA “BIG” survey comprises of three parts please complete whichever survey is relevant to you HERE

PEDCA Scoping Event a Great Success! 

The event was able to bring together a wide range of data centre industry views and input, many competitors and business rivals worked together and put forward their views on how PEDCA will work for the common good of the industry. 

The Event kicked off with a series of presentations headed up by DCA Senior Vice President and Emerson CTO Prof Ian Bitterlin, who described the industry’s issues and challenges.

Following this, presentations on the project itself and a look at the PEDCA survey results.

This got everyone in the right frame of mind for the workshops, which proved extremely valuable. Overall about 200 people attended the event which is a great start in ensuring the project moves ahead with a strong industry participant network to develop a Joint Action Plan for the industry.

The “joint” part of the “action plan” is absolutely essential for the project’s success- and that means you and your colleagues – if you missed this survey and the event this time, don’t worry there is much more to come, but do not miss the opportunity to participate in the next survey coming soon which starts to move into territory that gets serious for all of us – if you would like to participate on PEDCA and are not yet registered,  you can do so free at www.datacentrealliance.org (click on the “get involved” link)

Click HERE for pictures and downloads from the event:

Project PEDCA lifts off and calls for Industry Participation

Following the July kick off meeting of European delegates held at the University of East London, the PEDCA project looks ahead to busy schedule during September culminating in the project’s full scope definition. 

The Industry and its stakeholders across the EU are invited to take part and add their voice. This can be done by completing the survey HERE

The survey’s results will be collated, reviewed and presented at a special Workshop event held in London on 25th September, registrations are invited to attend the workshops HERE

The DCA and University of East London have been awarded a €1.7 Million Euro grant to lead a project to define the training and research needs of the data centre industry and develop an action plan.. 

The project involves thirteen partners drawn from the EU’s data centre “hotspot”nations; the Netherlands, Germany and the UK. for the full press release click HERE

 Work has already commenced and will call on all DCA members to contribute and help widen the participation.