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Global Leadership: Each year, Uptime Institute elevates certain applications out of the individual entry categories to honor with a Global Leadership Award. The winners of the Leadership Award category span multiple disciplines or regions. The Global Leadership award is given to organizations whose Brill Awards submissions demonstrate excellence across multiple disciplines or regions. This year, there were two Global Leadersip Award winners.

• The Boeing Company. The Boeing team was selected for its holistic approach to IT Efficiency. By focusing on efficiencies and new technologies in server hardware, and integrating those requirements and capacity plans into its new data center designs, Boeing was able to achieve significant savings.
   
  The company's new IT hardware procurement strategy reduced power consumption by 30%, as compared to the legacy equipment, while also providing a 50% reduction in floor‐space requirements. Electrical and communication cabling was also reduced by more than 60% with the adoption of blade servers and converged infrastructure. The team deployed a third-party data center design to match the equipment density requirements, using hot‐aisle containment and indirect air‐side economization to achieve significant capital expenditure and energy savings.
  
  
• United Airlines Inc. The United team was selected for its robust yet energy-efficient data center design, and the integration of its IT and Critical Facilities Management teams. More than three years ago, United Airlines realized it was essential to merge IT services. With that goal in mind, and eight data centers to manage, the airline designed a plan to condense these facilities into two data centers as a long-term goal. To meet that goal, United started on the design and buildout of a new greenfield 167,000 sq. ft. complex, inclusive with a 25,000 sq. ft., 4 MW expandable to 6 MW data center. This data center was commissioned in October 2013 and became operational in February of 2014.
   
  United also merged IT management structures when it developed the Critical Infrastructure Services (CFS) to manage this new facility. The CFS team supports all United Airlines data centers, reservation centers and airport IT infrastructure assets around the globe under a single team. This integrated structure remediated the traditional siloed nature of IT and facilities teams, and created a cooperative environment for buildout, maintenance, security and capacity planning for United's portfolio of critical IT resources.

Brill Awards entrants are judged by region (North America, Latin America, EMEA & Russia, and Asia Pacific). Entrants could submit in as many as five categories: Data Center Design, Operational Data Center Upgrade, Data Center Facilities Management, IT Efficiency and Product Solutions.

The winners are:

• AIG, American International Group, Inc. AIG updated a legacy data center environment to a next generation data center capable of housing the latest technologies to meet ever expanding IT demands. This transformation was accomplished while keeping the entire site operational, phasing in the next generation equipment alongside the legacy equipment. Upgrades include a new UPS system, new cooling enhancements including VFDs, and raised air set-point temperatures. AIG has also implemented detailed monitoring systems to further track savings and utilization trending over time. (Operational Data Center Upgrade, North America)
  
  
• Banco Bradesco S.A. Bradesco installed two 1000-kVA UPSs, two 240 element battery banks, two 2000-kVA transformers, one 1000-kVA transformer,  25 electric panels, two 1500-kVA generators, two 15,000 liter diesel tanks as part of a technological upgrade of the facility’s supply and energy distribution systems.
  
  Bradesco gathered qualified professionals to work on a feasibility study and project execution for expanding and modernizing its data center in Alphaville, which included managing the implementation of new systems in critical environments and considering the effect of activities that would be performed in parallel on production equipment so that these activities would not affect the availability of the bank’s services and business.
  
  Equipment installation was concluded in months (138 days), following the schedule and operational windows of the bank with uninterrupted weekly activities. The project has extended the life cycle of the data center IT infrastructure approximately 10 years, based on current technologies. (Operational Data Center Upgrade, LATAM)
  
  
• Chesapeake Energy Corporation. The Chesapeake Energy IT Computing Center includes three completely separate electrical distribution systems to help the facility meet the power reliability goals defined during a Program Definition phase. The design eliminated the need for parallel generators and switchgear as well as static transfer switch PDUs. Close coordination with operators of a 6,000-ton campus central plant enabled Chesapeake to meet requirements for continuous cooling during design and construction. (Data Center Design, North America)
  
  
• DuPont Fabros Technology. In July 2014, DuPont placed into service ACC7, the largest and most energy-efficient data center in DuPont Fabros Technology's (DFT) portfolio. DFT focused on achieving three goals when designing the facility:
  
  1.    Building a data center that is less expensive to build on a per-megawatt basis
  2.    Reducing maintenance costs
  3.    Achieving an industry-leading power usage effectiveness (PUE) less than 1.2
  
  ACC7 totals 446,000 gross square feet, with a total critical power capacity of 41.6 MW when fully built out. Each of its 28 computer rooms will be equipped to deliver a standard critical load of 1.486 MW, with the ability to increase density to offer up to 2.0 MW. (Data Center Design, North America)
  
  
• EBRC, European Business Reliance Centre. It operates five distant and interconnected state-of-the-art data centers in Luxembourg. Uptime Institute has certified two of these facilities as Tier IV Certified Constructed Facilities (TCCF); a third facility, presently certified Tier IV Certified Design Documents, will be submitted for TCCF in 2015. These facilities, with EBRC's "Trusted Data Centre Services" are the pillars of EBRC's one-stop-shop and fully certified offering, "Trusted Services Europe."
  
  By continuously improving the maturity of its processes through a "Service Improvement Programme," EBRC aims to deliver high-quality services to its clients according to Service Level Agreements (SLAs). EBRC's operations strategy is based on critical operations management and eco-efficient operations management, which includes:
  
  •    Highly skilled, trained, and certified staff to meet operational, emergency and risk management requirements
  •    Compliance with international standards and industry-grade operations
  •    ITIL processes and a complete maintainability and control program for every technical asset in every facility
  •    A computerized maintenance management system 
  
  EBRC's vision is to be a center of excellence in Europe in the management of sensitive information. (Data Center Facilities Management, EMEA)
  
  
• Falabella. Falabella's new data center in Santiago, Chile, includes the following features:
  
  •    Four 400 square meter (m2) IT rooms to be installed in four steps in a 7,680 m2 facility
  •    Installed loads of 671 kilowatts (kW) per room (180 racks with 3,726 W/rack)
  •    48-hours minimum diesel storage for generators
  •    Five UPS room with two 400-kW UPS each (one for each IT room and one stand by unit), allowing growth on demand
  •    Five 2.0 megavolt-amperes generators configured N+1
  
  Falabella met the challenge of providing these features with a low budget and minimum Capex by conceiving and delivering the project in a modular way, sharing costs among the phases. (Data Center Design, LATAM)
  
  
• Itaú Unibanco. Itaú Unibanco transformed its data center by virtualizating its x86 servers. The bank's goal in the medium term was to stop increasing physical equipment in the data center due to space limitations. Before beginning the virtualization process, Itaú Unibanco adoped a number of strategies to address obsolete servers and identify good candidates for virtualization. As a result, the bank repurposed 440 kW and 83 square meters of space in the data center, using equipment rationalization initiatives that have become continuous. (IT Efficiency, LATAM)
  
  
• Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley devised a simple and tactical -- yet effective -- way of correlating existing raw BMS branch circuit monitoring data with power chain information to facilitate custom DCIM-type power information with minimal cost. IT equipment capacity constraints acted as a catalyst for making use of this data to develop highly functional capacity management awareness that has facilitated efficiencies through maximization of critical resource utilization, increasing IT operational awareness and adding another element for use towards lowering TCO. (Data Center Facilities Management, North America)
  
  
• NEXTDC. NEXTDC's design utilizes Piller isolated parallel DRUPS power systems as the basis for the reliability of its data centers. This innovative design allowed the company to eliminate batteries and static switches from its facilities and provide continuous A and B power to IT equipment, even in the event of a UPS failure, thus eliminating common causes of IT downtime. NEXTDC's mechanical systems make use of Turbocor magnetic-bearing, low-friction compressors as key components in high-efficiency multi-compressor chillers, and utilize free air- and water-side economization in conjunction with variable-speed EC CRAC fans, hot/cold-aisle containment and innovative floor grille management to maintain a highly energy-efficient and reliable IT environment. (Product Solutions, APAC)
  
  
• Nomura Research Institute. Nomura Research Institute's new data center employs an innovative double-deck system designed to meet the cooling needs of IT loads up to 30 kW per rack. The double-deck system separates maintenance areas from server areas by floor and provides a well-balanced and stable volume of cold air to computing devices. In addition, the NRI facility uses free cooling and EC motors, resulting in total power savings of 30%, compared with its existing data center. (Data Center Design, APAC)
  
  
• Porto Seguro S.A. The Data Center team that manages Porto Seguro's five data centers uses a Command Center and a DCIM process to monitor, control, and operate its sites, enabling the company to pursue efficiency and reliability initiatives. These functionalities, plus the expertise of a Maintenance & Engineering dedicated team using the RCM principles, has enabled Porto Seguro to improve the reliability and availability of its facilities, make and report economic and environmental gains, and launch cloud computing initiatives. (Data Center Facilities Management, LATAM)
  
  
• The Raytheon Company. Raytheon's comprehensive IT sustainability program has significantly improved the efficiency of the company's IT operations, including efficiency improvements across IT systems, facilities management, and even corporate real estate strategy. The winning application included the following:
  
  •    3,000 servers virtualized or decommissioned since 2011
  •    Increased IT hardware cooling set points to reduce cooling energy use
  •    Matching application criticality to site redundancy level
  
  In 2011, Raytheon committed to 15 public sustainability goals, including a goal to generate one megawatt of IT power savings by 2015, which the team met, well ahead of schedule. In addition to energy savings, the program has captured more than $30 million in cost avoidance savings through reduced requirements for server hardware, system administration, occupancy and energy. Raytheon has set further goals for its IT efficiency in the future and plans to use IT to reduce energy use in other company operations. (IT Efficiency, North America)
  
  
• Swisscom AG. Swisscom's Wankdorf data center combines adiabatic re-cooling with rainwater, which completely eliminates the need for mechanical chillers and harmful refrigerants, and significantly reduces energy use. Swisscom cools using redundant air-conditioning units equipped with separate cold-water networks to cool its ICT rooms. Hybrid recoolers and redundant circulating pumps produce and transfer cool water for CRACs. When the outside temperature exceeds 21° C, treated water is introduced into the stream of warm air to extract heat through water evaporation (adiabatic cooling). (Data Center Design, EMEA)