News

Seven New Scope Areas and Proprietary Staff Assessment Tool Help Clients’ Strengthen Operational Excellence, Minimize Human Error, and Improve Workforce Skills

NEW YORK, NY – November 7, 2024  – Uptime Institute today announced its newly enhanced, market-leading, and globally adopted Management & Operations (M&O) Stamp of Approval. The extensive enhancements will improve clients’ ability to meet the compounding demands on their data centers, to better manage the complexities of data center infrastructure more efficiently and effectively, and to reduce operational risk by allowing them to more precisely identify and mitigate vulnerabilities in critical facilities. Participants in the new Uptime M&O program are provided with a comprehensive operations risk profile and actionable steps that drive organizational standardization throughout a site or entire data center portfolio and emphasize continuous improvement to better address the ever-evolving risks in all data center operations.

The M&O Stamp of Approval program scope includes a holistic assessment of staffing and organizational practices, maintenance, and operations activities together with specific, “fit-for-purpose” management and planning protocols for use across a data center portfolio or within a single facility. The M&O program provides a roadmap to align specific organizational strategies to help clients achieve critical business objectives for their digital infrastructure, such as risk reduction, reduced downtime, and improved operational efficiency.

In today’s market, data center operations programs and procedures must demonstrate flexibility and adaptability to address a proliferation of challenges. These include supply chain issues and staffing challenges, new industry and governmental regulations, and an increasing focus on comprehensive cyber and physical security. Even more demanding is the need for data center operations to evolve to meet the still nebulous yet rapidly scaling demands required to incorporate and support new technologies such as AI, liquid cooling adoption and the increasing power density of racks impacting the way data centers can and should be operated. Operations teams must be prepared to anticipate and respond to accelerating change, and the new M&O Stamp of Approval provides the comprehensive framework to address the ever-expanding number of challenges and risks to critical facilities.

“In this more complex and challenging environment, efficient and effective data center operations are more critical than ever,” said Christopher Brown, Chief Technical Officer, Uptime Institute. “To achieve sustainable operational resiliency, an end-to-end approach, that is both nuanced and complete, is required to identify potential vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and data center operational risks. The new M&O Stamp of Approval addresses both recent and evolving developments across digital infrastructure portfolios with varying deployments, whether Enterprise, HPC, Cloud, or Colocation.”

The new Uptime M&O program includes evaluation on two fundamental fronts, data center operations performance and data center staffing. In each area, proven Uptime protocols are deployed to identify risks on and across multiple levels, and in a variety of clear pathways to remediate the identified risk. The M&O Stamp of Approval evaluates data center operations with a focus on continuous improvement across 7 key segments of operations: Personnel Management; Maintenance; Facility Management & Optimization; Health, Safety & Security; Emergency Preparedness and Response; Planning, Coordination; and overall Quality Management.

Human capital management is essential to improved operational resilience. Having the right people with the right skills is crucial to every part of the data center lifecycle, from planning to design and from construction to operations to ensure reliability and availability. The 2024 Uptime Resiliency Survey shows that 66-80% of outages are still caused by human error, with a leading factor being individuals failing to follow procedures. Ongoing assessment of the specific human factor risks in a given location and across a portfolio operation continues to be the most potent lever that organizations can use to identify and address knowledge or confidence gaps that can lead to misapplied knowledge, lapses, and failures in a data center workplace.

In the expanded M&O program, operations staff will benefit from access to Uptime’s proprietary Competency & Confidence Assessment Modeling (CCAM®). CCAM results will identify training and growth opportunities for each member of staff, whether at the time of recruitment, onboarding, or on an ongoing basis. Managers can now quickly identify risks associated with specific individuals and mitigate these by providing a customized roadmap for precision training. M&O with CCAM® provides a complete, standardized, globally recognized assessment that enables data center operations teams to perform at their best. It ensures that hidden inefficiencies, gaps in skills or understanding and the associated risks do not impact the organization.

Data centers are an ever-increasingly complex and dynamic system of active components with an absolute dependency on qualified and well-trained staff to keep them all running. While operations tasks are too often considered as just a bundle of various tactical efforts, and teams as just a collection of individuals, assuring the overall effectiveness in improving operational resilience is the single most strategic investment that can be made to protect a digital-enabled business. Failure to recognize and address the human element as an ongoing priority can derail an organization’s entire digital business service delivery strategy.

Using the principles found in the globally recognized Tier Standard of Operational Sustainability, Uptime Institute has already assessed over 1,000 data center operations programs worldwide, helping organizations independently validate the effectiveness of their critical facilities management and the operational practices of their existing data centers. The new M&O program ensures organizations can remain competitive today and reliably prepare to meet the growing challenges faced by all data centers and digital infrastructure globally.

Learn More:

Register for “The Importance of Prioritizing Operational Resiliency and Highly Evolved Data Center Infrastructure” webinar discussing how to support reliable, secure, and effective data center operations, November 14th at 9:00 AM PST (9:00 AM PST, 12:00 PM EST, and 5:00 PM GMT). To join our Uptime Institute Bright Talk Channel, go to https://www.brighttalk.com/join/.

About Uptime Institute

Uptime Institute is the Global Digital Infrastructure Authority. With over 3,500 awards issued in over 118 countries around the globe, and over 1,100 currently active projects in 80+ countries, Uptime has helped tens of thousands of companies optimize critical IT assets while managing costs, resources, and efficiency.

For over 30 years, the company has established industry-leading benchmarks for data center performance, resilience, sustainability, and efficiency, which provide customers assurance that their digital infrastructure can perform across a wide array of operating conditions at a level consistent with their individual business needs. Uptime’s Tier Standard is the IT industry’s most trusted and adopted global standard for the design, construction, and operation of data centers. Offerings include the organization’s Tier Standard and Certifications, Management & Operations reviews and assessments including SCIRA-FSI financial sector risk assessment, the Sustainability Assessment, and a broad range of additional risk management, performance, availability, and related offerings. Uptime Education training programs have been successfully completed by over 90,000 data center professionals, such as the much-vaunted ATD (Accredited Tier Designer) and AOS (Accredited Operations Specialist). More recently, the Uptime Education curriculum has been expanded by the acquisition of CNet Training, Ltd. In 2023.

Uptime Institute is headquartered in New York, NY, with main offices in London, Sao Paulo, Dubai, Riyadh, Singapore, and Taipei, Madrid and full-time Uptime professionals based in over 34 countries around the world. For more information, please visit uptimeinstitute.com.

Demand for Digital Services Continues Growth Both in Volume and Compute Intensity

NEW YORK, NY – July 30, 2024 – Uptime Institute today announced the release of its 14th Annual Global Data Center survey. The increased demand for digital services with both volume and compute intensity are challenging the power and cooling capabilities of much of the existing infrastructure. To meet the rising demand, data center operators and their IT clients are both investing and innovating more in their IT services and facilities and using external services. The effectiveness and impact of these investments will serve to shape the industry in the years ahead.

“Our data shows operators poised for major changes ahead on multiple levels,” said Andy Lawrence, executive director of research, Uptime Intelligence. “In 2024, we see the challenges of increased demand impacting power and cooling capabilities of existing facilities and the need for further investment to keep up with the demand. At the same time the industry needs to focus on continued staffing challenges to match capacity growth. And regulatory requirements are here and cannot be dismissed.”

Now in its 14th year, Uptime Institute’s annual survey remains the most comprehensive and longest-running study of its kind. The findings of this report highlight the practices and experiences of data center owners and operators in the areas of resiliency, sustainability, efficiency, staffing, cloud and artificial intelligence. It provides detailed insights into the digital infrastructure landscape and a view into its future trajectory. Key findings from the 2024 report include:

• Fewer than one half of data center owners and operators are tracking the metrics needed to assess their sustainability and/or meet pending regulatory requirements.
• Most operators recognize the benefits of AI and its potential. But despite many operators planning to host the technology, trust in AI for use in data center operations has declined for the third year in a row.
• The frequency and severity of data center outages remain mainly unchanged from 2023 or show small improvements. Operators are countering increases in complexity, density and extreme weather with investment and good management practices.
• Average server rack densities are increasing but remain below 8 kilowatts (kW). Most facilities do not have racks above 30kW, and those that do have only a few. This is expected to change in coming years.
• Enterprises continue to meet their IT needs with hybrid architectures. More than one half of workloads (55%) are now off-premises, continuing the gradual trend of recent years. Many continued to maintain their own data centers.
• Staffing challenges have neither improved nor worsened from 2023. More effort is needed to expand labor pools and skillsets to match the pace of capacity growth.\
• Average PUE levels remain mostly flat for the fifth consecutive year, but this conceals advances in newer, larger facilities.

About the Survey:

Uptime conducted this year’s annual Global Data Center Survey online and by email in the first half of 2024. The survey participants represent a wide range of industry verticals in multiple countries. Responses were collected from a total of 879 end users registered for the survey and answered at least one question. More than one half are located in North America and Europe. Approximately one third of respondents work for professional IT/data center service providers (staff with operational or executive responsibilities for a third-party data center), such as those offering colocation, wholesale, software or cloud computing services.

Learn More:

Download the executive summary report here and register for the webinar here covering key trends and takeaways from the survey results on July 31st at 9:00 AM PDT (9:00 AM PDT, 12:00 PM EDT, and 5:00 PM BST). To join our Uptime Institute Bright Talk Channel, go to https://www.brighttalk.com/join/.

About Uptime Institute

Uptime Institute is the Global Digital Infrastructure Authority. With over 3,500 awards issued in over 118 countries around the globe, and over 1,000 currently active projects in 80+ countries, Uptime has helped tens of thousands of companies optimize critical IT assets while managing costs, resources, and efficiency.

For over 30 years, the company has established industry-leading benchmarks for data center performance, resilience, sustainability, and efficiency, which provide customers assurance that their digital infrastructure can perform across a wide array of operating conditions at a level consistent with their individual business needs. Uptime’s Tier Standard is the IT industry’s most trusted and adopted global standard for the design, construction, and operation of data centers. Offerings include the organization’s Tier Standard and Certifications, Management & Operations reviews and assessments including SCIRA-FSI financial sector risk assessment, the Sustainability Assessment and a broad range of additional risk management, performance, availability, and related offerings. Uptime Education training programs have been successfully completed by over 90,000 data center professionals, expanded by the acquisition of CNet Training, Ltd.

Uptime Institute is headquartered in New York, NY, with main offices in London, Sao Paulo, Dubai, Riyadh, Singapore, and Taipei, and full-time Uptime professionals based in over 34 countries around the world. For more information, please visit www.uptimeinstitute.com.

Media contact:
Brenda South
Publicrelations@uptimeinstitute.com
206-706-6467

Company Adds Jeff Wood as Vice President, North America

NEW YORK, NY – October 24, 2024  – Uptime Institute today announced the appointment of Jeff Wood to the position of Vice President, North America. In his new position, Wood is responsible for directing all commercial aspects of Uptime Institute market penetration and service delivery across U.S. and Canada.

Wood is an industry expert with over 20 years of experience in the digital infrastructure market primarily in the hardware, power, and connection space. His principal goal is to increase Uptime Institute consulting and certification revenue throughout the United States and Canada, to participate in appropriate product/service development, as well as to ensure the consistency of Uptime service delivery. He joins Uptime Institute from Wesco/Anixter, headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA, where he served as Vice President HVAC & DCIM, and was responsible for building Power and HVAC market share as well as supporting global deployments. Wood also developed programs and initiatives between Partners and Market Supplier Teams to drive sales engagement strategies within local markets. Prior to Wesco/Anixter, Wood held positions at companies including MGE UPS Systems, and Tripp Lite.

“We are pleased to welcome Jeff Wood join our team,” said Mustapha Louni, Chief Business Officer, Uptime Institute. “His strong industry background and expertise will serve both our organization and its customers. Jeff Wood’s strategic industry knowledge will help North American clients improve reliability, efficiency, and cost effectiveness and will be instrumental to our continued growth in North America.”

This position, along with multiple new additions are key to Uptime Institute’s plans for expanded growth and serve to create a larger global presence for the organization’s products and services, building upon the prestigious Tier Standard and Certifications and continuing to launch new offerings, like the Uptime Institute Sustainability Assessment.

About Uptime Institute

Uptime Institute is the Global Digital Infrastructure Authority. With over 3,500 awards issued in over 118 countries around the globe, and over 1,000 currently active projects in 80+ countries, Uptime has helped tens of thousands of companies optimize critical IT assets while managing costs, resources, and efficiency.

For over 30 years, the company has established industry-leading benchmarks for data center performance, resilience, sustainability, and efficiency, which provide customers assurance that their digital infrastructure can perform across a wide array of operating conditions at a level consistent with their individual business needs. Uptime’s Tier Standard is the IT industry’s most trusted and adopted global standard for the design, construction, and operation of data centers. Offerings include the organization’s Tier Standard and Certifications, Management & Operations reviews and assessment including SCIRA-FSI financial sector risk assessment, the Sustainability Assessment and a broad range of additional risk management, performance, availability, and related offerings. Uptime Education training programs have been successfully completed by over 90,000 data center professionals, expanded by the acquisition of CNet Training, Ltd. In 2023.

Uptime Institute is headquartered in New York, NY, with main offices in London, Sao Paulo, Dubai, Riyadh, Singapore, and Taipei, and full-time Uptime professionals based in over 34 countries around the world. For more information, please visit uptimeinstitute.com.

Company Adds Digital Infrastructure Veteran Rachid Arabi as Vice President, Europe

NEW YORK, NY – June 17, 2024  – Uptime Institute today announced the appointment of Rachid Arabi to the position of Vice President, Europe. In his new position, Arabi is responsible for directing all commercial aspects of Uptime Institute market penetration and service delivery across Europe and the United Kingdom.

Arabi is an industry expert with over 20 years of experience in the digital infrastructure market primarily in the design, construction, and operation of mission critical facilities. His principal goal is to increase Uptime Institute consulting and certification revenue throughout Europe and the United Kingdom, to participate in appropriate product/service development, as well as to ensure the consistency of Uptime service delivery. He joins Uptime Institute from Datalink in Saudi Arabia, where he served as Director of Operations, managing the operation of eleven data centers and ten Telecom Central Offices to meet service objectives and site availability requirements. Prior to Datalink, Arabi worked for Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE). Saudi Arabia, as Practice Lead, Mission Critical Facilities Services. He also worked with Schneider Electric in growing levels of responsibility from 2002-2016.

“We are pleased to have Rachid Arabi join our team,” said Mustapha Louni, Chief Business Officer, Uptime Institute. “His strong industry background will benefit both our organization and its customers. He has a deep knowledge of the entire Data Center lifecycle services from strategy planning and design to construction and operation. He has assisted numerous organizations across EMEA in optimizing their DC infrastructure, helping them improve reliability, efficiency, and cost effectiveness. Additionally, his unique perspectives, knowledge and skills will be instrumental to our future success in Europe and the United Kingdom.”

This new position, along with several others are key to the organization’s plans for expanded international growth and to create a larger global presence for the organization’s products and services, building upon the prestigious Tier Standard and Certifications and continuing to launch new offerings. The Uptime Institute Sustainability Assessment for Digital Infrastructure was announced April 16th, and enables organizations to identify, track and report on sustainability metrics and programs. The company also launched the Uptime Institute Data Center Academy in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in March 2024.

About Uptime Institute

Uptime Institute is the Global Digital Infrastructure Authority. With over 3,400 awards issued in over 114 countries around the globe, and over 1,000 currently active projects in 80+ countries, Uptime has helped tens of thousands of companies optimize critical IT assets while managing costs, resources, and efficiency.

For over 30 years, the company has established industry-leading benchmarks for data center performance, resilience, sustainability, and efficiency, which provide customers assurance that their digital infrastructure can perform across a wide array of operating conditions at a level consistent with their individual business needs. Uptime’s Tier Standard is the IT industry’s most trusted and adopted global standard for the design, construction, and operation of data centers. Offerings include the organization’s Tier Standard and Certifications, Management & Operations reviews and assessment including SCIRA-FSI financial sector risk assessment, the Sustainability Assessment and a broad range of additional risk management, performance, availability, and related offerings. Uptime Education training programs have been successfully completed by over 90,000 data center professionals, expanded by the acquisition of CNet Training, Ltd.

Uptime Institute is headquartered in New York, NY, with main offices in London, Sao Paulo, Dubai, Riyadh, Singapore, and Taipei, and full-time Uptime professionals based in over 34 countries around the world. For more information, please visit uptimeinstitute.com.