Industry body the Data Centre Alliance (DCA) has launched the world’s first completely independent multi-disciplinary data centre ‘MOT’ – the DCA Data Centre Certification programme.
Executive director Simon Campbell-Whyte explained: 'Until now, people buying data centre services had no sure-fire or simple way to judge the true quality and resilience of a data centre – unless they themselves were highly technical and could perform detailed and often expensive audits.
'Equally, although data centres may, or may not, be built and operated to existing voluntary standards, there was no readily affordable and truly independently-audited over-arching certification which they could undertake – to gain independent third-party attestation of the quality, operational integrity, energy efficiency and resilience of their offering.'
The new DCA Data Centre Certification program has been developed by the Data Centre Alliance’s members – an international collaboration between data centre operators, customers, suppliers, academics and professional individuals. It is the first to be based on customer business goals rather than on pure, and often economically unrealistic, technical requirements.
'Our members haven't reinvented the wheel,' said Campbell-Whyte. 'what they have done is to harmonise the many available guidelines and standards – and devise an independently auditable certification platform that any data centre, anywhere in the world, can be equally tested and certified against.'
