The lack of attention and resource allocation to data center operations has been a looming issue since the founding of Uptime Institute. A highly resilient data center design is not enough because every design can be defeated by human error.

As market conditions and IT economics drive new data centers and consolidation, a robust facilities management program is even more essential.

Take the Crisis of Facilities Management Pop Quiz
• Are you confident in your Facilities team’s ability to manage a technologically advanced and highly efficient design to your 24×7 availability requirements?
• Can you easily replace any member of that team?
• Are you protected against poor operations practices migrating from older sites to higher-criticality data centers?
• Do you have sites that operate in isolation without adhering to global corporate standards? Do you even have corporate global standards?
• If you outsource any aspect of your data center operations, how do you avoid losing responsibility and accountability? Do you manage a contract or direct an expert team?

Attend Uptime Institute Symposium 2013 and gain the insight you need to make informed decisions for your organization. The Symposium program features dozens of sessions focusing on the challenges of the data center operations professional, including this sample:

• Knowing Data Center Operational Cost IS Your Job
• The Why and How of Third-Party Data Center Due Diligence
• Superstorm Sandy Lessons Learned
• Building a Data Center Facilities Team
• High Energy Efficiency! Low workforce productivity?

We will also host a pre-conference tutorial, drawing conclusions form working with Uptime Institute clients and members to provide guidance and real-world experience on the core elements of a successful data center facilities management program.

Uptime Institute technical staff will discuss: How to better manage staff skills and qualification; the importance of thorough commissioning; and advice for developing technical documentation and maintenance policies.

Register here. We look forward to seeing you in May.

In 2008, Fujitsu UK built a 7.5 megawatt data center in North London to service the company’s large outsourcing customers and to launch a cloud computing offering. The customers for these services were largely government and financial sector and demanded data center design and operational excellence, so Fujitsu decided to pursue independent certification of its new data center.

Fujitsu’s North London Data Centre earned Uptime Institute Tier III Certification, but the company didn’t stop there. Fujitsu wanted to ensure that its world class facility was being managed to the highest level of availability, so the company pursued and earned Uptime Institute Operational Sustainability Gold.

In this video, Fujitsu’s data center operations team discusses what they learned through the Data Center Tier Certification and Operational Sustainability processes. They also discuss the nature of providing trusted IT services as a cloud and outsourced data center provider.

The Fujitsu data center operations team also takes you on a virtual tour of this data center, explaining the various facilities components in detail, discussing the various decisions that went into the design.

Uptime Institute’s Tier Standard: Topology and Tier Standard: Operational Sustainability are now available for download in Portuguese.

The translation was completed to better serve the data center market in Brazil, including our valued clients there: Ativas, T-Systems, Vivo, and Petrobras.

Uptime Institute last month awarded Operational Sustainability Gold Certification to Fujitsu’s London North Data Center. Fujitsu’s London North Data Center provides managed data center services to major corporations in Financial Services, Utilities, Service Companies, and Government. Gold Certification signifies that Fujitsu operates this facility to a world-class level.

Follow the link for full details on Fujitsu’s Operational Sustainability achievement.

Next week, Uptime Institute is sending a video crew to the Fujitsu site to interview this excellent data center operations team. Congratulations again to Fujitsu. Stay tuned for the Fujitsu video on Uptime Institute’s YouTube Channel.

Data Center Knowledge reported on AFCOM’s new “State of the Data Center” survey results, and pointed out that server and storage deployments are growing, while data center staff is shrinking, or staying the same in most data centers.

According to preliminary results from Uptime Institute’s Inaugural Data Center Survey, 71% of data center owners/operators had 24×7 staffing at their data centers. Around 32% of respondents said their data centers were understaffed. And 60% reported budget as the most significant constraint on staffing needs.

According to Uptime Institute’s AIR database, 70% of reported data center outages are directly attributable to human error. Management decisions regarding staffing levels, training and maintenance may have the most significant impact on a data center site’s availability over time. This is why staffing requirements play such a prominent role in Uptime Institute’s Tier Standard Operational Sustainability (see document for staffing/availability requirements matrix).

The right number of qualified people on appropriate shifts is critical to meeting long-term performance objectives, providing a comprehensive maintenance program, and coordinating effective financial management and capacity planning in the data center.

Click here to participate in Uptime Institute’s Inaugural data center survey and receive a free copy of the findings.

Comment on data center staffing issues on our blog, or reply on Twitter @UptimeInstitute.