WIREDGOV

A recent survey of attitudes to standards among data centre suppliers and customers revealed some surprising views.

Early this year we circulated a survey by Keysource to our data centre group members. This explored attitudes to standards and accreditations within the UK data centre market, including suppliers and customers. From the results it is clear that standards are playing an increasingly important role, but that there is too much complexity in the landscape. This leads to confusion on every level – distinguishing what is and what is not a standard, identifying when and where standards should be applied,  differentiating accreditation from certification and understanding which standards are accompanied by a formal audit process and which are not.   

At techUK we strongly support the adoption of bespoke industry standards and are pleased to see increasing reference to them in policy. However, we need to be vigilant – policy makers need to be referencing the right standards in the right contexts and we need to do more to demystify the standards landscape. We are already updating our existing Data Centre Standards Mapand our briefing on Performance Metrics for Tiny Tots, but we plan to add a narrative to the former document to explain how standards have evolved, the relationships between them and the basic hierarchy of standards organisations.

SURVEY REPORT (PDF)