Colt recently earned Uptime Institute’s Tier III Certification of Design Documents for two halls inside its London 3 facility. The Tier III Design Certification is an independent assessment of the capability of the design to continue to sustain computer room operations during any maintenance activity.

Earlier this year Colt became the first data center operator in Europe to be accredited with Uptime Institute’s Management & Operations (M&O) Stamp of Approval which it was awarded for its London 3 site.

“This is great news not only for us, but for our customers as well,” wrote Victor Smith, Director of Product Development, Colt Data Centre Services. “Certification is an independent assessment of our data centres’ resilience and as such ensures that our customers can be assured they are getting the highest quality design available.”

The photos below are from a recent visit to the Verizon data center in Northeast Ohio. This site was awarded Uptime Institute Tier III Facility Certification, U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Gold and most recently, an Uptime Institute Green Enterprise IT Award.

From the press release:

Designed from the ground up with a focus on the environment, the Twinsburg Data Center spans 140,000 square feet and features energy-saving technologies, including warm water cooling, high efficiency pumps and fans, and LED lighting. In addition to an aggressive materials recycling program, the center utilizes heat from computers to warm the building and melt snow in winter around the facility. Melted snow is cleaned and recycled and used to provide water in building lavatories or to supplement the cooling system.

I was joined on the tour by staff from Akron, OH-based Peters, Tschantz & Associates, Inc. PTA provided Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing, and Technology systems design services to Verizon Wireless for their Twinsburg Data Center. Pat Klanac, Associate, Sr. Mechanical Engineer at PTA is an Uptime Institute Accredited Tier Designer and led the project.

Thomas Truelove, Manager IT and Data Center Operations, led the tour of the facility. Thomas is a member of the Uptime Institute Network and had just presented on the Verizon site at a recent Network meeting.

Verizon owns and operates a great looking data center, as you can see in the photos below.

Primus Business Services, a division of Primus Telecommunications Canada Inc., today announced it has been awarded Uptime Institute’s Tier III Certification for Design Documents for the first phase of the company’s GTA Data Centre located in Markham. This facility will be the only multi-tenant data center in Canada to achieve the rare Tier III Certification for both design and construction from the Uptime Institute when it opens in July 2012.

“The fundamental concept of Tier III is Concurrent Maintainability, and the benefit is that the Data Center will never be shut down to maintain or replace the heating and cooling equipment. Since the need for planned facility shutdowns is eliminated, Primus’ new facility will offer best-in-class Data Center services in Canada,” said Vince Renaud, Senior Tier Certification Authority, Uptime Institute. “Once the construction is completed and verified by Uptime Institute, Primus will be the first and only full Tier III Certified commercial data center in Canada.”

The value of Tier III Certification to Canadian businesses and organizations is significant as it presents to IT decision makers an unbiased validation that saves time and eliminates guesswork. Primus has engaged the Uptime Institute to validate both the engineering and construction of the data center. Without this rigorous Certification, customers must source their own expensive or time-consuming audits, or place faith in unsubstantiated marketing claims.

“This is truly a significant achievement in data centre design, construction and operations, and a significant milestone in the Canadian Data Centre industry,” said AJ Byers, Executive Vice President of Primus Business Services. “With Tier III Certification supplemented by PCI and SSAE industry auditing standards, the new GTA Data Centre will have the highest degree of independent validation in the country, giving customers unprecedented assurances of service reliability.”

“We are extremely pleased to be working with Uptime Institute to open Canada’s only Certified Tier III design and construction facility. The attainment of these exclusive Certifications demonstrates that we are providing the level of transparency and validation businesses expect from a strategic partner,” added Byers.

The fastest growing market for Uptime Institute Tier Certification is multi-tenant data center service providers in the colocation and cloud computing business. Over 50% of Uptime Institute’s ongoing Tier Certifications are for third party data center service providers.

In this video, Uptime Institute VP Julian Kudritzki outlines Tier Certification’s value proposition for data center service providers.

Uptime Institute Tier Certification provide assurances to data center owners and their clients, that each and every aspect of the design meets the objective, down to the breaker and valve positioning level. It is insurance for data center owners that they don’t pay for a Tier IV and get a Tier II.

The second benefit is the external facing value. Uptime Institute Tier Certification provides marketing value for third party data center service providers. Having an unbiased third party do the due diligence on the design and constructed facility can also shorten customer’s time to contract.

For more information on Uptime Institute Tier Certification services, please contact Tom Baehr, or download this PDF.

Family owned Central-Oregon cable company BendBroadband only recently decided to get into the data center business, but in that short time the organization has quickly proven it wants to be a leader in the industry.

The company earned Uptime Institute Tier III Facility Certification, and was the first site to be certified with a Kyoto Cooling system. In fact, the BendBroadband Vault is one of the biggest Kyoto Cooling installations in North America.

BendBroadband was also awarded the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Gold status, under the LEED 2009 Building Design and Construction (LEED BD+C) rating system. From the BendBroadband blog: This is a monumental achievement and one that we have been working toward since the initial concept stage of the Vault. This certification puts us in the upper echelon of data centers and makes us only the 5th data center in the world to attain this level.

BendBroadband is also an early adopter of Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software. The company recently announced it is using nlyte software for capacity planning.

I spoke with Steven Hall, Data Center Director at BendBroadband about the company’s DCIM use. Hall uses nlyte to help the organization bring new customers into the data center. Clients provide BendBroadband with a list of the servers they want to deploy, and Hall plugs those models into nlyte to plan out how much space, power and cooling will be necessary to meet the workload, and offers various options for deploying the equipment.

“We use it as part of our on-boarding process,” Hall said. “We help customers take a quick look at different cabinet layouts. Do they need a high density cabinet, or should we spread it out over two cabinets? The tool was perfect for that.”