For the past 36 months the DCA together with seven other DCA strategic partners have been working on a joint Horizon 2020 project called EURECA. 

This represents the second of three projects the data centre sector has secured research funding for as a direct result of DCA involvement. The bids to apply for projects take literally hundreds of combined hours and the team was up against some very stiff competition - only 1-50 bids receive funding!  This is why as a trade association, we are so proud when these efforts pay off to the benefit of the whole data centre sector.
The project call came from the Horizon 2020 innovation and research programme dealing with the adoption of energy efficient best practice and market uptake of energy efficient products, services within Europe’s Public-Sector organisations. Although originally focused towards the public sector the services developed are of equal value to the private sector as well as they share the same challenges and are all equally looking for best practice guidance and independent support for their IT transformation projects; support which EURECA can provide. For more information visit the website www.dca-global.org/research.

“Member support and strong collaboration with Strategic/Academic Partners were very much key to the success of this project with all  energy saving targets and KPIs being met”;  so I would like to take the opportunity to send my personal thanks to Mark Acton from CBRE, John Booth from Carbon3IT, Dr Frank Verhaegen from Certios, Mark Andre Wolf from Maki Consulting, Dr Jon Summers, Zaak Vlasveld, Esther Van-Bergen and Julie Chenadec from Green IT Amsterdam and finally but no means least Prof Rabih Bashroush and his team at the University of East London as project coordinators. This was a great team effort and a clear demonstration of the value a trade association such as the DCA can bring to the table and the benefits of working together, sharing knowledge and promoting best practice.  As Anton Chekhov said “knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice”.

By the time you read this forward we will be well into May,  maybe June so if you have missed out on some of the great conferences in the first half of the year there are still lots more coming up you should consider attending. We have Datacloud Europe in Monaco 12-14th June so hopefully by the time you are reading this you will still have time to register to attend, this is then followed by the DCA Trade Associations own annual workshop-based conference DCT 2018 (Data Centre Transformation) hosted in conjunction with Data Centre Solutions in July.

DCT2018 will be hosted at Manchester University on the 3rd July to provide DCA members and delegates every opportunity to attend and benefit from the educational workshop/network sessions taking place.

A full list of all the events the DCA host, sponsor, endorse or promote can be found on the DCA website www.dca-global.org/events. We can then all can enjoy a short summer recess to take a breath and recharge for what will be a busy end to the year with events in Ireland, Nordics, Africa, Singapore, Frankfurt, Paris and London all supported by the data centre trade association, we look forward to seeing you at an event near you!