The Uptime Institute's New Efficient IT Stamp of Approval

The Uptime Institute, a division of 451 Research, has announced its new Efficient IT Stamp of Approval, a third party assessment for data center efficiency and sustainability. Uptime Institute has completed an extensive pilot phase and announced the public rollout during the opening keynote of the tenth annual Uptime Institute Symposium.

The Uptime Institute has been around for two decades and is best known for its Tier Certification program. The Institute later expanded into an Operational Stamp of Approval, and now it’s using its knowledgebase to provide management-based recommendations around cost and resource savings. There are two award levels for Uptime Institute Efficient IT: Approved and Activated.

IT efficiency is assessed across leadership, operations, and design. Data centers have long been focused on tuning facilities for power and cooling efficiencies, the biggest costs, however, efficiency extends beyond nuts and bolts. Just as people are often the greatest threats to uptime, they can be one of the greatest threats to efficiency

“Uptime Institute Efficient IT is about better use of resources to better enable the business,” said Julian Kudritzki, chief operating officer of Uptime Institute. “Efficient IT isn’t bought, it’s managed. But in many siloed organizations, there is no effective structure to recognize achievement or set meaningful goals. Uptime Institute Efficient IT Stamp of Approval codifies the management processes and leadership behaviors that ensure sustained cost savings and resource agility.”

The stamp of approval is based on behaviors and outcomes rather than prescriptive requirements, said Uptime Institute. The approach for the Efficient IT Stamp of Approval is similar to Uptime Institute Management & Operations (M&O) Stamp of Approval. CenturyLink pursued the M&O stamp across its entire footprint.

The Uptime Institute Efficient IT Stamp of Approval benchmarks the enterprise’s achievement in terms of planning, decision making, actions taken, and monitoring to improve asset utilization and extend lifecycle across compute, storage, and network systems, and the data center itself.

Early adopters of Uptime Institute Efficient IT include leading integrated healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente, with two Stamps of Approval, and Mexico-based CEMEX, one of the world’s largest building materials companies, with an Activated stamp for its site in Monterrey.