Digital Realty Trust works towards NABERS certification

Data centre vendor wants to certify Melbourne and Sydney facilities

Digital Realty Trust is working to get its Sydney and Melbourne data centres certified to meet the National Australian Built Environment Rating System (NABERS) for data centres rating.

The rating system was launched in Australia in February 2013 and assesses the building infrastructure and IT equipment of data centres. CIOs, IT managers and co-location tenants can use the rating to assess, compare and improve the energy performance of their facility.

Digital Realty Trust's head of sales engineering, Damien Spillane, said it has made a commitment to undertake NABERS certification at its Australian sites. However, getting certified is a “long and evolved process.”

“We have been working on it for a number of months,” he said. Spillane could not say when the certification would be completed.

However, the company has received some international green credentials.

In October 2014, the company’s Melbourne and Sydney data centres received LEED ratings from the United States Green Building Council (UGSBC).

The LEED rating system is used to certify buildings that are designed, constructed, maintained and operated for improved environmental and human health performance. While the rating system started in the US, it is now used by companies in 120 countries.

According to Digital Realty Trust, its data centres were the first in Australia to receive the LEED certification. The Melbourne data centre in Deer Park received a platinum rating while the Sydney facility in Erskine Park achieved gold.

Turning to plans for 2015, Spillane said it is seeing growth in hybrid cloud services such as software-as-a-service (SaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS).

“The great value for them is that they can do it within our ecosystem. Customers don’t need to leave the four walls of our data centre,” said Spillane. This is because customers can access cloud service providers that Digital Realty Trust works with.

Data sovereignty compliance, risk mitigation and energy efficiency are other topics that customers are interested in, he added.

“Our customers want facilities that are highly certified that meet security and energy efficiency requirements,” he said.

For example, National Australia Bank (NAB) signed a long-term lease in 2011 to take space in the vendor’s Melbourne data centre. NAB has forecast operational cost reductions of $22 million over seven years as it consolidates 20 data centres and computer rooms down to two facilities in Melbourne.

Follow Hamish Barwick on Twitter: @HamishBarwick

Follow Computerworld Australia on Twitter: @ComputerworldAU, or take part in the Computerworld conversation on LinkedIn: Computerworld Australia

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Tags data centresgreen ITNABERSDigital Realty Trust

More about BuiltCustomersDigital RealtyDigital Realty TrustNABNational Australia Bank

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