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DATA CENTRE INFRASTRUCTURE
focused on risk-mitigation, compliance and ensuring best practice. However, each regional market is different in terms of maturity, so the focus may vary. “The UK, Amsterdam, Paris and Frankfurt built their data centres around 15-20 years ago and they are running strong. When you have been running something for that long, you know its strengths and weaknesses; where the points of failure are and you take the operational procedures to avoid it,” says Collerton. He points out that in the more mature markets, where there is not a lot of building going on, operational best practice is the main focus. “If you run a portfolio of data centres how do you know team A, B and C are doing the same thing?” Internal audits can be conducted but the results risk being biased, he points out. A third-party, independent assessment can be performed, using common criteria, developed with 25 global data centre companies, to evaluate staffing, training, maintenance, management, capacity planning and operations.
We find that we frequently have to talk people down from Tier 4 to a Tier 3, saving them money in design and certification costs. In some markets, they want ‘a Ferrari’ when a Ford Mondeo will suit their purposes All the factors that affect day-to-day data centre operations are assessed: “We look at how the site is running equipment – for example, are they ‘killing’ the UPS? Have the alarms been set properly? Is it always on the job training for the staff? How do they work with their vendors? How often are they cancelling maintenance?” Comparisons can be made with other sites within an enterprise’s data centre portfolio. In Africa, where there is currently significant investment, the Uptime Institute is working with governments on flagship projects – such as ensuring the reliability of the first sub-
Saharan electronic voting operation. Countries in these regions, that want to secure inward investment, need to demonstrate that their infrastructure and operations meet internationally recognised certification. It is not just emerging markets that can benefit, however: “Germany has the TUV standard, which is good, but businesses outside the country want a global standard that they understand,” says Collerton. “Spain and Italy are strong markets for us, as they are building new infrastructure.” The Uptime Institute technical team is two-thirds engineering and onethird operations and best
practice. This is key to the organisation’s approach: “We are not prescriptive. We start by asking, ‘what do you use the data centre for?’ It is not about ‘how many UPSs you need or how much redundancy you need. What is the business reason behind the data centre?” Collerton explains. “We often have people contact us and say ‘we want a Tier 4’… it is the most complex, but it may not be right for your business. It may be too complex… We find that we frequently have to talk people down from Tier 4 to a Tier 3, saving them money in design and certification costs. In some markets, they want ‘a Ferrari’ when a Ford Mondeo will suit their purposes.” The Uptime Institute is recognised worldwide for the creation and administration of the rigorous Tier standards and certifications that enable data centres to achieve their mission while mitigating risk. It has awarded about 1,200 certifications in more than 80 countries and rained nearly 2,000 professionals with accredited Tier training.
‘Look before you leap to the Cloud,’ councils warned Researchers from London’s Brunel University have tracked what happens when local councils transfer services to Cloud computing and warned that local authorities and public sector organisations should “do their homework” before switching to the Cloud. Local authorities across Europe have been urged to move in-house IT services – such as servers, email and telephones – to internet-based providers, amid pressure to reduce their total investments in IT infrastructures and resources (eg data centres). Warwickshire County Council and the London Borough of Hillingdon were among the UK’s first to announce plans to switch in about 2012. A study of three local councils found the Cloud brought several advantages but authorities tend to make the shift too hastily, with one council instantly hit by hackers. “These findings have messages for both local government and central government,” says Dr Uthayasankar Sivarajah, part of the Brunel University research team. One of the authorities faced an immediate security breach that caused chaos,” added the lecturer in operations and information systems management. “Data was accessed illegally by an unauthorised third party and the private sector Cloud provider blamed human error.” Government strategists predicted in 2011 that switching to the G-Cloud or government Cloud could
MCP June 2017
save £3.2bn because as a shared service, costs are spread among organisations. But despite cost-cutting pressure, many public sector managers see the Cloud as more a liability than labour saver, with data security and downtime the biggest fears. Making it easier to work from home and better information management are key advantages to councils switching to Cloudbased technologies, the team found. Major cons meanwhile are a lack of data ownership and loss of control and governance, because of a grey area around who has access to information. The report, Risk and rewards of cloud computing in the UK public sector, also revealed a general feeling among workers that their authority’s move was a purely rushed attempt to meet the political agenda. “There are huge black holes between what the councils are trying to do and what they are achieving,” says Dr Sivarajah. The biggest lesson to councils, he underlines, is that “the right person needs to drive and lead the implementation and sell it to the workers. At operational level they could all see real benefits in cost savings. But it is still early days and we don’t know what the long-term impact will be. That may take 10 years to find out. It might reduce the headcount in IT departments, but I can’t see it cutting out the need for them altogether.”
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