Five EU industry associations to join forces on data centre subjects

30 November 2015, Jahrl Stefan Norberg

The five industry associations CESIT (FR), ECO (GE), TECHUK (UK), DDA (NL) and Host-in-Ireland (IE) have in common decided to collaborate on data centre market subjects. A launch event took place in Paris last week on 25/Nov/2015.

As a founding member of the EUDCA, I attended the event to both participate in this launch and to better understand their different objectives. I am by default positive to cross-border initiatives. Here some info and impressions from the event.

OBJECTIVES & ACTIVITIES

The associations have set some initial objectives:

  1. Raise the industry profile of data centres
  2. Share knowledge and information beyond country borders
  3. Grow towards an industry collective

In order to reach these objectives, they have set some activities like:

  • Knowledge exchange
  • EU representation
  • Surveys
  • White papers and some common items on a roadmap

The DDA has just released a report on “Dutch Data Centre Report 2015” and another one on “Green IT.” These are initiatives that can be partially used in other regions for similar activities.ECO has also recently released a report on the next year’s internet market. This

ECO has also recently released a report on the next year’s internet market. This will, of course, be distributed over the borders.

CODE OF CONDUCT FOR DATA CENTRES

Philippe Luce, a board member of CESIT, explained that one common task will be to promote the EU commission’s initiative “EU Code of Conduct” for data centres. CESIT has just edited an own French translation of the English version explaining the process, the procedures and the implications of it.

EUROPEAN LEVEL AND EUDCA

At a European level, CESIT and DDA have already set to collaborate with the EUDCA (European Data Centre Association). Up today I do not think any direct initiatives or activities have been defined but the work has been initiated. How that will work out when the associations now start to collaborate directly with each other is to be discovered in the future.

Stephane Duproz, the actual president of the EUDCA and also on the board of CESIT, expressed his positive view of a collaboration over the borders by the regional associations.

COMMENTS

This announced collaboration is a great initiative, even if all the associations are not “pure” data centre industry-related. The larger ones like TECHUK and ECO will most probably enable some visibility as they do have more resources for different initiatives.

Perhaps a co-working group can be created to develop a common EU-oriented data centre reference to compete with the Uptime Tiers levels?! There is already very good bases developed by ECO with their “ECO Datacenter Star Audit” program. CESIT should for sure export their experiences and work on governance issues in data centres.I am not sure of the role of HOST-IN-IRELAND in this collaboration. Their principal aim seems to more be to directly attract external investment and deployment in Ireland than to promote the industry as such. I may be wrong.

I am not sure of the role of HOST-IN-IRELAND in this collaboration. Their principal aim seems to more be to directly attract external investment and deployment in Ireland than to promote the industry as such. I may be wrong.

THE ASSOCIATIONS

CESIT (FR, Comités des Exploitants de Salles Informatiques et Télécom, www.cesit.fr) – French association for companies running IT and telecom infrastructures. They have about 100 member companies.

Although I am not a member of CESIT, I have learned CESIT has a number of very active working groups with the objectives to have practical benefits. For example, CESIT has been working on the often neglected subject of data centre governance issues as that can directly diminish operational risks within data centres.

ECO (GE, Verband der Internetwirtschaft, www.eco.de) – German association for internet related segments (suppliers, operators, cloud providers, M2M mobile, security solutions) and probably Europe’s largest of its kind.

Judith Ellis from ECO said that 50% of the 800 member organizations are German companies, and in that respect, ECO is already quite international! ECO has a specific Data Centre Expert Group and organizes regular events and network occasions.

TECHUK (UK, www.techuk.org) – English association with a vision for the UK to be a leader in the development and use of digital technology (software, I, training courses…) for the benefit of the UK economy and its citizens. They have about 850 member companies.

Emma Fryer from TECHUK exposed their different tasks: (1) Inform about policies; (2) Representing the sector on policy subjects; (3) Collect data: (4) Make sure citizens have the correct data on for example “Data centre and power”; (5) Cooperation with other bodies; (6) Assist to identify business risks (earlier this was very energy related, now larger so on flooding, IT security…).

DDA (NL, www.dutchdatacenters.nl) – A recent Dutch association founded in September 2014 for data centre companies with at least 400m² of net IT space. They already have 28 member companies. Stijn Grove at DDA said that they would like to bring a clearer picture of what the data centres do and also explain the sustainability of data centres in all. Stijn also pointed out that 60% of the Dutch data centres are in Amsterdam! As already mentioned, they have already released a couple of reports to support their initiatives in the Netherlands.HOST-IN-IRELAND (IE, www.hostinireland.com) – From their web-site: “Host in Ireland is an industry-led initiative specifically developed to generate awareness and recognition of Ireland’s benefits as an optimum location to host digital assets.

HOST-IN-IRELAND (IE, www.hostinireland.com) – From their web-site: “Host in Ireland is an industry-led initiative specifically developed to generate awareness and recognition of Ireland’s benefits as an optimum location to host digital assets.
Garry Connolly, president of Host-In-Ireland, explained that Ireland is the 5th market in Europe for co-location sites and they host a number of mega- / hyper-scale data centre sites. This has not happened over a night, of course. Many American IT and software companies started their European presence by implementing activities in Ireland. These have step-by-step evolved to become the rather important hub for data centres that Ireland currently is.

EUDCA (Brussels, www.eudca.org) – The “European Data Centre Association” was founded in October 2011 and has about 30 international data centre industry member companies.