INDUSTRY INTELLIGENCE POWERED BY THE DCA
INDUSTRY INTELLIGENCE POWERED BY THE DCA
Seven tips for running a data
centre business during COVID-19
COVID-19, otherwise known as Coronavirus, is a pandemic
that has caused disruption on a global scale. Steve Bowes-
Phipps, DCA Advisory Board Member and Senior Data Centre
Consultant, PTS Consulting, offers his advice on how
to limit this disruption and run a data centre business
successfully during these challenging times.
A
s Senior Data Centre
Consultant for PTS, Bowes-
Phipps sits on the Advisory
Board of The DCA (UK Data
Centre Trade Association) and as Chair
on the DCA Special Interest Group for
Workforce Development and Capability.
Bowes-Phipps discusses seven things you
could be doing as a data provider or end-
user that would perhaps help you in some
way during the pandemic.
1) Maintaining availability
During this pandemic, most data centres
will be seeing a huge upturn in traffic and
demand due to home working, online
courses and streaming services etc., so
the number one thing I see repeatedly
around data centre availability, or lack of
it, is human error. If you want to reduce
human error then minimise change;
change in a data centre can be devastating
if it’s not managed appropriately and
correctly, and even if it is, there’s still
the opportunity for somebody to make a
mistake or to put something in place that
impacts a production environment which
will take time to rectify. So, minimise
change and possibly insert a change
freeze for this particular period.
www.intelligentdatacentres.com
2) Understand your business
There is a well tried and tested exercise
called ‘Operational Risk Assessment’
where the framework initially looks at
understanding what it is you need to
provide as a business, then what you have
in place operationally to assist you in
delivering this, where the gaps might be
around some of the controls and measures
you would use to double-check processes
are being followed and finally, having
strategies and tactics in place to eliminate
or mitigate any of the risks that have
derived from this exercise. The exercise
can be tremendously informative and
enlightening and is really recommended
as it can make a big difference to the way
your organisation can cope with situations
such as these.
3) Maintaining a safe and healthy
working environment
During the COVID-19 outbreak, particularly
in commercial data centres they tend to
have concentrated touchpoints such as
kitchenettes, which unfortunately are
where the virus could easily be passed
from one person to another. You may want
to consider closing these communal areas
at this particular time. There’ll unavoidably
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