There is a plethora of data centre certifications and standards in the market. To the normal IT person, these standards may be confusing and to a business person the value thereof can be hidden.
This is according to Andre Schoeman, head product management at Neotel Liquid Telecom, speaking yesterday at the ITWeb Data Centre Summit 2017. Schoeman guided delegates to pick the right data centre and business standards to follow and how to distinguish those ones that are important or not.
In order to understand which standard or certification is applicable to a particular business, he highlighted on what constitutes a standard.
"Different rules combined become a standard, and then you need to comply to those standards, which results in certification, once you have been certified, this will then provide you with the accreditation and endorsement.
"You need to understand why you are looking for a data centre certification or a standard and what business problem you are looking to solve. It's important to know what you are looking for i.e. the right standard for the right industry for the right application," he explained.
Once an organisation is aware of their business problem, then they will look for the standards that apply to that, whether it be from a traditional data centre stable or standards specifically created for their industry.
"The IT user must be critical as to what is the business use of the standard, for example, it might be that you don't need a data centre certification as such, hence users have to be careful when selecting standards and when selecting compliancy, ensuring they select something that is applicable to their business case. Just because they provide a data centre services, it doesn't mean they have to apply data centre standards, it could mean that their business requires a different operational standard to comply to."
Discussing the business benefits of obtaining certification, he added that it will simplify the operational quagmire, the design and the planning of the organisation to a significant degree.
"The business benefits of certification means somebody else has already been through the process of observing what does or doesn't work, and by applying those standards you get to pick from the best, what the learnings is that other people have already been through and you only just apply that. They are created for best practices, to learn from other people's experience and to set a common language of understanding," he pointed out.
Standards, he concluded, may come from various industry bodies such as forums, interest groups, equipment providers and commercial entities etc.
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