CEEDA or the Certified Energy Efficiency Data centre Award was designed to fill gap in an industry that has been at the forefront of enabling a greener and more sustainable society. Information Technology is seen by many as being the primary solution to addressing and reducing the carbon emissions of almost every other sector.
It is now widely recognised that our use of energy and other natural resources that are considered to affect climate change can be heavily reduced or at least optimised through the use of IT. While this has meant that the use of IT is exploding, our industry has taken great steps to ensure IT energy growth is not also exploding.
There are many initiatives and organisations addressing in-use energy in IT, both within the data centre and end user devices. Organisations such as the Green Grid, the Japanese Green IT Promotion Council and others that work on the development of metrics, best practices and technology. With BCS’ unique position in being a completely vendor neutral professional institute, it felt its role was one of enabling recognition, awareness and promotion of the good work being carried out within our industry.
That’s exactly what CEEDA is all about. Externally verified evidence that an organisation has implemented internationally accepted best practices within their data centre. With the BCS Data Centre Specialist Group now in its fifth year and the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres now in its third year of operation, it was time to create an industry-wide independent standard that people could trust in.
CEEDA is a two-stage independent assessment and then audit of a live operating data centre. Dependent upon the best practices evidenced on site and how the facility is operated, an assessor can recommend a bronze, silver or gold award. Evidence gathered during the assessment is then passed to an independent auditor for a second level of verification before a final award recommendation is made to BCS and an assessment and improvement report provided to the client.
BCS is working with its partners to take CEEDA global and create a benchmark and brand that becomes trusted and recognised as the way to identify good, better and the best built and operated data centres out there today.
Zahl Limbuwala
