Citywest Hotel Conference, Dublin, Ireland

Among two of the the presentations: “How Energy Legislation Will Affect the IT Industry,” Andrew Jones, RCDD, Alquist Consulting, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom The Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme started on 1 April 2010 in the United Kingdom. Under this legislation, users must reduce consumption by approximately 5% each year. Data centre managers will face significant challenges in complying with this new legislation.

Auditing a Data Centre—But to What Standard?” Barry Elliott, RCDD, Capitoline LLP, Nantwich, Cheshire, United Kingdom. Most would agree that auditing a data centre is a good idea to demonstrate compliance with various standards and operating practices. However, there is a great deal of confusion as to what data centres are being audited against. There approximately 40 different standards in circulation that claim some applicability to data centres, either very closely (e.g., TIA-942) or more generally, where a data centre is treated as just another place of work. So when a data centre operator or a customer of a data centre calls for an audit, then the issue becomes which subject area(s) are of most interest to that operator or user? One answer may be to audit all of them, but this would take a long time, cost more than €250,000 and need a full-time manager just to keep up with the paperwork and ongoing maintenance of these qualifications. Users and operators must, therefore, be specific as to what they really need to achieve.