Datavita, Scotland’s 'premier' datacentre provider, has been awarded Tier 3 Design Certification by The Uptime Institute (TUI) for phase 1 of the Fortis Datacentre fit out programme. Demonstrating its commitment to build Scotland’s first world class co-location datacentre, Datavita has stated that this is the first stage in a three stage programme to create Scotland’s first datacentre that is certified for Design, Construction and Operational Sustainability. Datavita has been awarded one of the new type of TUI Design certifications that has an expiry date set for two years from the date of issue. This change was introduced by TUI to combat the practice of achieving Design certification and then cutting corners at the construction stage but the datacentre continuing to claim certification. Datavita has committed to achieve TUI Tier 3 Construction certification before the Fortis Datacentre goes live in May of this year.
However, Datavita has stated that Design and Construction certification together are still not enough. In 2015, there were a number of high profile datacentre outages that made the press, that were caused by human factors. Typically, a lack of a proper maintenance programme. This is why Datavita has committed to achieving TUI certification for Operational Sustainability in 2017. With TUI certification, Design is a prerequisite to achieving Construction and Construction is a prerequisite to achieving Operational Sustainability.
Danny Quinn, Operations Director at Datavita said: “The quality of the datacentre and how it is operated are equally as important. This is why we decided very early on to commit to working with TUI to not only reassure our customers that we have designed and constructed the facility to the right standard but that we will also operate it to the required standard. This is why we are now working toward Tier 3 Construction Certification in early June with Operational Sustainability Certification to follow.”