INDUSTRY INTELLIGENCE POWERED BY THE DCA
to minimise subjectivity and by so
doing ensure the industry forges more
trusted relationships with data centre
customers and the wider community
of digital service users, financers and
policy makers.
The DCA certification scheme is not
designed to replace a customer’s
tendering process or recreate or replace
any recognised international or regional
standards, as it is recognised that the
customer’s needs are unique in virtually
every case.
Nor can the DCA certification scheme
guarantee that un-planned outages will not
still take place; however, to mitigate the risk,
the DCA certification scheme will provide
the customer with clear identification of
the resilience goal and an assurance that
this resilience goal is backed up by a valid
strategy that is deployed and maintained
through a process of independent
inspections and annual surveillance checks
by a third party internationally recognised
and approved certification body.
Conclusion
site access security. These four pillars
represent the focus area for users and
customers of colocation, hosting and
outsourcing service providers.
The programme ultimately aims to
improve decision making and reassure
consumers and stakeholders of a data
centre’s ability to meet its business role in
terms of reliability, environmental impact
and management culture.
The aim of the DCA certification scheme is
to maintain and deliver a scheme which is:
• • Independent – The customer
may select the firm of their choice to
carry out and coordinate their data
centre certification application. The
firm chosen must be pre-approved by
the DCA which has been supplied with
the required information and tools to
participate in the scheme.
The DCA uses its own staff and an
‘Accreditation Board’ of individuals
who are free of any (real or perceived)
conflicts of interest with data centre
www.intelligentdatacentres.com
industry vendors, owners or operators
to deliver certification services.
• • Affordable - The DCA is a non-
profit trade association and will charge
a fixed rate designed to cover the
administration as scheme owners. Pre-
auditing assessment work is carried
out by pre-approved assessors and the
final review and award of certification
is carried out by a UKAS approved
certification body.
• • Unified – The DCA certification
scheme aims to unify and align to
industry recognised best practices
such as the EU Code of Conduct
and the European EN50600 Suite of
Standards. The DCA scheme aims to
provide unbiased industry wide clarity
In conclusion, all standards are voluntary
but, if implemented, should provide any
customer with a level of reassurance and
comfort that their equipment and data is
being kept safe and secure in a mission
critical environment, together with all
the policies, processes and procedures
to ensure that in an emergency situation,
systems remain available.
We, at the DCA, believe that some
sort of regulation is inevitable. It may
be at national level or wider, but it is
coming and it is better to prepare now
and have all the elements in place. The
DCA certification has been designed to
comply fully with the CEN/CENELEC/
ETSI requirements and we recommend
that all data centre operators consider
the certification. ◊
The purpose of the DCA certification scheme exists to provide
an industry led, widely adopted recognition of a data centre’s
designed purpose, its operational integrity, energy efficiency
practices and site access security.
Issue 07
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