News Archive 2009

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01.12. Working Group Data Center: talking about PUE

Cologne, 01.12.2009 - The last meeting of the eco Data Center Working Group in 2009 was highly successful. Harald A. Summa, CEO at eco, welcomed 52 participants at the beginning of the meeting.

Patrick Pulvermüller (Host Europe GmbH) passed the leadership of the Data Center Working Group on to Dr. Béla Waldhauser (Global Switch FM GmbH). Waldhauser arrived in 2007 as Managing Director for Global Switch FM GmbH. Previously, he was responsible for Telecity and was with the company for four years.

The presentations are available for free download here.

AGENDA / Protocol »

1 December 2009

DCSA 2.0: Data center certification enhanced

Cologne, 08.10.2010 - Data centers have been certified using eco’s “Datacenter Star Audit” (DCSA) framework since October 2005. The stars awarded measure the quality and variety of products and services offered by data centers.

eco has now enhanced its certification system with DCSA 2.0, offering more depth, taking into consideration new technological developments and the diversification data centers have undergone since 2005. The new metrics also let customers compare data centers more readily in terms of security, availability, and system redundancy.

8 October 2009

eco Congress 2009 – Sharpening the image

Cologne, 30.09.2009 - More than 300 experts gathered in Cologne from 29 - 30 September to participate in the industry’s most important event, the eco congress 2009, under the name “Sharpening the image”. The first day was dedicated to broadband, a topic as critical as ever with Germany still far from full ADSL and VDSL coverage and the situation looking unlikely to change anytime soon.

As Dr. Josef Schäfer of Vodafone noted, “The federal Government has abandoned its benchmark of giving every household a 50Mbit/s line by 2014. They would be content with 75 percent now.” Dr. Iris Henseler-Unger, of the German Federal Network Agency, pointed out that there are new partnerships emerging, with Deutsche Telekom forging alliances with other telco providers. The panel “Names & Numbers” saw a lively debate on the merits of new Top-Level Domains (TLD) for cities, with Stéphane Van Gelder, of INDOM, arguing the importance of, for example, a Paris TLD. Matthias Meyer-Schönherr, of Sedo, still saw most demand steering towards classic domains.

The panel on the Digital Dividend discussed the question “How liberal must we be in assigning new frequencies?” The panel on Unified Communications dealt with the necessity of presence amongst other vital questions in that emerging field. Microsoft’s Sven Thimm estimated that employees lose up to 20 hours per week through sub-standard communication processes. He sees big opportunities for solutions that show users which colleagues or clients are currently available – and how to best get a hold of them.

The second day of eco’s congress brought the panel on mobile technologies, presenting several approaches on how to close the digital divide, with diverging opinions on the future costs of mobile computing. John Strand, of Strand Consult, thought that Germany could evolve from one of Europe’s most expensive countries for mobile computing to become one of the cheapest.

The panel on data centers focused on energy efficiency. A consensus emerged that virtualisation was one of the most promising methods of increasing efficiency. Discussions on Cloud Computing indicated that there has been a dramatic increase on the demand side.

The presentations are available for download

1 October 2009

eco certifies data centers in Munich and Cologne

Cologne, 04.08.2010 - eco has awarded the maximum of five stars to the data center run by noris network AG for successfully passing eco’s data center star audit (DCSA) with flying colours. The Munich-based data center distinguished itself through state-of-the-art technology and excellent staff, achieving 94.6 out of 100 points. Two data centers run by Host Europe GmbH in Cologne were also certified, and both matched the outstanding results they achieved in an audit two years ago.

Host Europe’s Data Center I once again earned four stars and its Data Center III achieved five. eco’s audit offers an objective, standardised benchmark for data center products and services. The stars serve as proof of quality and service. Certificates are based on personal site visits by the auditors and a detailed questionnaire.

4 August 2009

10.03. Working Group Data Center: Keeping data centres cool and efficient

Cologne, 10.03.2009 - eco’s data center working group, which met on 10 March in Frankfurt, brought 36 participants together to learn about efficient cooling systems for data centers in heterogeneous environments. Roland Broch (eco) gave the first presentation, detailing the newest developments in the Datacenter Star Audits system. The key message was that the star-ranking system will remain in use, but that the weighting of the factors considered will shift.

The presentations are available for free download here.

Protocol / AGENDA »

12 March 2009

eco creates benchmark for green data centres

Cologne, 09.01.2010 - Germany’s data centers are especially energy efficient. As eco uncovered in a nationwide survey, they average a Power Usage Effectiveness of 1.63 (PUE, with a score of 1 indicating perfect efficiency). eco was also able to show vast differences between data centers, indicating that many operators have significant room for improvement. “Data centers can now, for the first time, really benchmark their energy efficiency,” said Patrick Pulvermüller, Managing Director of Host Europe and leader of eco’s data center working group.

According to Pulvemüller, the study also highlights how action can be taken to increase efficiency. “We found that it's a combination of several factors – dividing air streams, for instance, setting up servers in cold and warm alleys – that really establishes good energy efficiency.” The study showed that only 27 per cent of data center operators perform regular checks on efficiency and only 33 percent have appointed staff to manage it.

9 January 2009