Edward van Leent is the Chairman and CEO of the EPI Group of
Companies. EPI specialises in data centre consulting, auditing,
certification and training. He will be delivering a keynote at CDC
Sydney on “The Future of Data Centre Operations”.
He has identified a clear need in data centre markets where existing
sets of standards are not dealing effectively with the causes of
downtime. “It’s evident that human error is one of the main causes
of downtime” and van Leent refers also to the Gartner figure that
over 70% of disruption can be traced back to human error.
The paradox that concerns him is that while a significant proportion
of risk can be attributed to people operating the data centres, key
standards tend to emphasize the design and build: “We often notice
that a lot of data centres pour extensive investments and resources
into the infrastructure and facilities without implementing proper
operational procedures and equipping staff with the required
competences. In the end this leads to things falling apart.”
In his keynote presentation, van Leent will focus on the challenges
and the risks currently facing the industry including areas which the
industry may be hesitant to acknowledge. “If your data centre has
an issue from a design point of view, then it’s very easy to identify
and often easy to point fingers at others. However, if there are
process related issues we often have no one else to blame except
ourselves as the ones being in control of the processes”.
The huge number of processes required to operate a data center,
the urgency of operations, plus the fact that there’s too much work
and too few people means there isn’t the time for continual review.
Van Leent will describe some common operational risks even
among data centres which have met ISO standards. He will then
present what a data centre operational quality framework should
look like, how the data centre quality framework (DCOS) has been
developed and how it can improve efficiency and reduce risk.
His key objective is to “change the mindset of data centres about the importance of operations and to take a critical look at their data
centre operations, conducting self-assessment followed by an
external assessment. They must consider the risks of not doing
anything. Cleaning the mess takes a lot more time than preventing
the mess”.
Van Leent will also discuss the planning processes, training and
operational strategy. He stresses the need to train people properly
– while many dollars are spent on equipment, not very much is
spent on people. “A data centre will cost millions of dollars to build
and to run, yet no or a very small fraction of money is invested in
providing the staff with professional data center training. People
can’t train themselves and expecting them to learn on the job mean
allowing them to make mistakes on the job”.
He stresses also the need for greater accountability in the industry:
“When an airline makes a mistake, it can cause many casualties –
data centres are the same. We must get more serious about risk –
this is a mission critical industry where downtime can have a great
impact on the economy, the business and people”.