Data Center Professional Services

Designing, managing and operating data center infrastructure requires in-depth assessments of performance and risks. Your business depends on your data center, and with evidence-based, authoritative and unbiased guidance, you can implement operational changes for impressive results.

For over thirty years, the business-critical infrastructure industry has relied on Uptime Institute for unrivaled expertise, innovative approaches and best-practice standards. Uptime Institute is your resource for industry-leading data center services.

We have experience with thousands of organizations and unique data center infrastructures around the world. Our services for data centers address a range of challenges. Whether you need a stand-alone service or a combination of offerings, our team can identify the best solutions for you.

When you want a high-performing, reliable and efficient data center, Uptime Institute provides the guidance and resources you need to meet your goals. 

The Data Center Experts

Uptime Institute is responsible for creating and administering the globally known and recognized Tier Standard that help data centers reach their goals as they reduce risk. Our data center professional services employ decades of field experience with our Tier Standards methodology to deliver comprehensive consultations. We support thousands of data centers around the world and offer solutions for an extensive range of challenges in IT environments.

When you trust us for data center consulting, you will work with some of the best professionals in the industry.

AI Custom Support

Today, artificial intelligence (AI) is ushering in a fundamental surge in data center capacity requirements. Uptime Institute Tier Standard: Topology and Tier Standard: Operational Sustainability have been applied to AI data centers with liquid cooling, supporting ultra-high-density GPU and CPU clusters for training and inference use cases. This ensures enterprises and colocation service providers can maintain their resiliency and availability standards while accommodating AI Workloads.

Management and Operations Stamp of Approval

With continued demand for data across all business functions, today’s IT and data center infrastructure stakeholders are under continuous pressure to deliver value while maintaining cost and efficiency. The Management & Operations (M&O) Stamp of Approval provides the education guidance and framework to drive best practices for the effective management and operations of a data center. By partnering with our Uptime Institute, you show your commitment to operational excellence, illustrating third-party validation to existing data center facilities, independent of the Tier Classification System.

Data Center Risk Assessment

Whether you are considering an acquisition of a standalone data center facility, a merger with another organization with an existing data center portfolio, or a consolidation of your own data center assets, our Data Center Risk Assessment offering can help you reduce the risk associated with managing such large capital assets. 

We leverage decades of experience, looking at thousands of facilities worldwide, to help you examine both data center design and operations. Our team will help you identify risks, diagnose issues, appraise strategic value, and determine "most likely" Tier rating.

Sustainability Assessment

Uptime Institute's Sustainability Assessment helps organizations identify, document, track and report on sustainability programs across their complete IT estate – including enterprise-operated data centers, colocation providers, cloud and hyperscaler partners, and managed service providers.

The Assessment is based on over two decades of experience in designing digital infrastructure sustainability programs and putting those programs into practice.

Sustainability Strategy Gap Analysis

The environmental sustainability of data center operations has become a major concern for investor, customer, regulatory, legislative, and environmental stakeholders.

Our Sustainability Strategy Gap Analysis was developed to review and compare an organization's current sustainability data, metrics, and goals against global best practices.

SCIRA-FSI

Recognizing the growing regulatory requirement and the adoption of more complex hybrid IT infrastructures by the FSI community, Uptime Institute has introduced the SCIRA-FSI assessment to help financial sector organizations assess the operational resilience of their critical infrastructure across enterprise-owned data centers, multi-tenant data center service providers, cloud, IT, and managed service providers.

Uptime Institute brought together over 20 premier financial institutions from across the world to form its Program Design Partners and build a standardized approach to help the sector better assess and mitigate outages.

DCIM Consulting Services

The average DCIM buyer spends over six months evaluating potential suppliers, and then an additional 6-12 months deploying the chosen solution. This results in significant staff costs and unnecessary delays if an organization’s business requirements demand a DCIM solution. Uptime Institute's DCIM consulting service helps data center executives understand the vendor landscape, deploy on a timely schedule, avoid overspending, and choose the right solution for their infrastructure.

Digital Resiliency Assessment

Today's organizations have complex infrastructures comprised of multiple data centers, colocation facilities and the cloud.

Our Digital Resiliency Assessment is designed to provide a deep evaluation of your data center infrastructure to determine risks and expected performance

Using the assessment’s findings and our experts recommendations, you can raise your data center staffing, processes and technology to world-class standards.

FMO Advisory Services

FMO Advisory Services provide a strategic approach to balance the data center objectives of availability, cost, and performance in your day-to-day operations. In interactive, on-site workshops, Uptime Institute Professional Services consultants offer the hands-on guidance you need to develop, implement, and refine a rigorous facility management program to govern the successful long-term operation of your data center.

Building Characteristics Review

Every data center is not created equal. Do you know and understand how to work with your building’s characteristics to ensure room for growth and reduce your risk?

Uptime Institute’s Building Characteristics Review reviews the architectural and structural features of your facility.

The Building Characteristics Review evaluation criteria and methodology is drawn from Uptime Institute’s Tier Standards and extensive field experience gained by working with thousands of data centers around the globe, and insights gained from the analysis of the world’s largest knowledgebase of data center incidents and outages gathered over multiple decades.

Facility Security Review

Facility Security is an important component in the strategic review of any data center to determine its physical safety and security to ensure that it can support the needs of the business.

Uptime Institute's Facility Security Review evaluation criteria and evaluation methodology following the Uptime Institute Tier Standard methodology. The review thoroughly examines the existing physical security components and their function within the critical facility topology and related operational plans associated with it, and then articulates in a report with an unbiased review of the structure’s physical security standing and attributes. The review includes recommendations for mitigation and remediation of any gaps in order to align the site’s infrastructure and operations with the business requirements.

Strategic Platform Selection Guidance - FORCSS^®

Determining the best choice between IT deployment alternatives for your firm can be a complicated decision, as you balance sometimes competing business, facility engineering, computing, operating, and market considerations.

Uptime Institute has developed a system to capture, compare, and prioritize the various impacts of IT deployment alternatives, helping organizations align on a coherent strategy that balances Financial, Opportunity, Risk, Compliance, Sustainability, and Service Quality: FORCSS.

Custom Consulting

The pace of change in the digital infrastructure industry has never been quicker. 

Data center owners and operators struggle with deployment and expansion strategies, financial modeling, and fundamental questions about best compute venue for their future workloads.  Colocation and cloud providers have their own set of challenges - demand forecasting in a rapidly changing landscape, market positioning, and designing effective go-to-market strategies. 

Answering these tough questions requires both a depth of technical expertise and a breadth of market knowledge.  Uptime is uniquely positioned to meet these requirements.  Our custom consulting services provide tailored approaches to solving your toughest challenges when it comes to digital infrastructure.