C A S E S T U D Y
What value does third‐party verification bring to Datacom’ s customers?
Third‐party verification gives customers confidence that our claims about reliability, security and operational maturity have been independently tested. Many of our customers run their own audit and assurance programmes. Being able to provide an external report from Uptime Institute simplifies those processes and reduces their internal burden.
The benefits include:
• Objective assurance: Customers are not relying solely on vendor self‐assessment
• Benchmarking: Uptime Institute’ s framework allows customers to compare our operations with global best practice
• Transparency: Detailed findings and recommendations give customers visibility into how we manage risk and where we are investing to improve
• Risk reduction: For boards, regulators and auditors, independent validation helps demonstrate that their critical infrastructure is hosted with a provider that takes resilience and governance seriously
Third‐party verification turns our operational rigour into something customers can comfortably reference in their own risk and compliance frameworks.
What changes were made to Datacom’ s organisational structure based on Uptime’ s‘ Staffing and Organisation Assessment Category’?
The Staffing and Organisation Assessment Category prompted us to take a fresh, structured look at how we support our people and how we resource our 24 / 7 environment. As a result, we made several targeted changes, including:
• Rebalancing shifts and resourcing: We redesigned shift patterns and resourcing so that our teams have better coverage without routinely relying on overtime, significantly reducing fatigue risk.
• Clearer career pathways: We clarified roles and progression paths within the data centre team, linking them to defined competencies and training requirements so staff can see how they can advance.
• Enhanced training and development: We strengthened our training programmes with a mix of formal courses and hands‐on development, enabling many team members to upskill quickly and move into more senior roles.
• Greater focus on staff welfare: We put more emphasis on wellbeing initiatives to ensure our people are supported in what can be a high‐pressure, shift‐based environment.
These changes have made our organisation more resilient, reduced staff turnover and created a stronger culture of ownership and professionalism across our data centre operations.
According to Uptime Intelligence, human error is a leading cause of outages. How does Datacom mitigate this risk?
We recognise that technology alone doesn’ t prevent outages – people and process are just as critical. Our approach to minimising human error includes:
• Standardised, documented procedures: All critical activities – from switching operations to change management – follow well‐defined, documented processes that have been peer‐reviewed and tested.
• Rigorous change control: Changes to critical systems go through formal risk assessment, approvals and, where possible, testing in non‐production environments before being implemented.
• Training and competency management: Staff are trained and assessed against specific competencies for the systems they operate. We use a combination of classroom, online and practical training to ensure knowledge is embedded.
• Team‐based operations: High‐risk activities are not performed by a single individual in isolation. Peer checks and dual‐control practices reduce the chance of a single‐person mistake causing an outage.
• Incident review and continuous improvement: Any incident, near miss or anomaly is reviewed to identify root causes and procedures are updated or training is facilitated accordingly. Lessons learned are shared across all sites.
Our ongoing engagement with Uptime Institute provides an external lens on how effectively we manage these risks, and we use its feedback to refine our practices further.
What future sustainability initiatives might be introduced across Datacom’ s data centres?
Sustainability is central to Datacom’ s strategy, and we see our data centres as a major lever to progress toward our net‐zero ambitions. Our New Zealand facilities already operate on 100 % renewable energy and are Toitū Carbon Reduce certified.
Looking ahead, we’ re exploring several initiatives, including:
• Further efficiency gains: Continuing to drive down power usage effectiveness( PUE) through exploring advanced cooling technologies( such as indirect evaporative systems and liquid cooling), improved airflow management and AI‐driven monitoring to optimise set points in real-time.
• Heat reuse: Assessing options for productive reuse of waste heat from data centres, for example, to support nearby facilities such as greenhouses or other industrial processes.
• Deeper transparency for customers: Providing more granular, real‐time reporting on energy use, PUE and renewable energy matching, so customers can incorporate accurate data centre emissions into their own ESG reporting.
• Long‐term renewable and price certainty: Building on our existing long‐term renewable energy agreements to give customers stable, low‐carbon power pricing that insulates them from energymarket volatility.
As AI and high‐density workloads grow, we see sustainable design and operation as both an environmental responsibility and a business advantage, lowering operating costs for our customers while reducing our collective carbon footprint. �
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