DatacenterDynamics Datacentre Leaders Awards Winners Announced At 5th Annual Gala Dinner

An audience of 700 luminaries from Europe’s data centre markets attended a landmark evening hosted by DatacenterDynamics at London’s Lancaster Hotel.

London, United Kingdom; The winners of the 2011 DatacenterDynamics Datacentre Leaders’ Awards were announced last night during a gala dinner at London’s Lancaster Hotel. This year’s awards saw fierce competition with a record number of entries from more countries than ever before, and record attendance at the evening event. MC for the awards was publisher and broadcaster, Andrew Neil and a charity auction on behalf of SPARKS was led by actor Robert Powell.

Welcoming guests to the awards, George Rockett, co-founder of DatacenterDynamics said, “ICT remains critical to the development of economies, societies and individuals so the role and responsibilities associated with data centres grows accordingly. Tonight we are here to celebrate the accomplishments of the data centre industry as a whole and in particular to recognise the innovation and leadership that underpins its continuing development. This year, the quality, variety and number of entries have again surpassed our expectations.”

A team of 32 judges drawn from the data centre industry and including representatives from Dell, HP, BCS, The Cooperative Bank, ABN AMRO Bank, Morgan Stanley and Tesco, selected the finest on offer from over 150 entries.  The awards and their winners are as follows:

The Outstanding Contribution to the Industry Award was made to Liam Newcombe - the unanimous selection of the Judging Panel for his ‘relentless’ contribution of knowledge and expertise to the international data centre and IT communities over the past six years. Many of the white papers he has authored have become internationally recognised and referenced by other experts as the cornerstone analyses in their areas.

For the past three years Liam has chaired the Best Practice working group within the European Code of Conduct for data centres, championing and driving energy efficiency best practice into every area of the industry.  He was personally involved in getting the UK Government to adopt the code, as well as spending countless hours of his own time advising and guiding European governments, universities and businesses on how to implement the code’s best practices.

He continues to works closely with bodies such as the US EPA, the European Commission Code of Conduct, the Japanese GreenIT Promotion Council, the UK CIO Council’s Green Delivery Unit, the US Department of Energy, UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change, ASHRAE the Green Grid and is a strong driving force for energy and cost efficiency in the UK through his role as Secretary of the Data Centre Specialist Group at the BCS.

After receiving the Award Liam Newcombe said, “I’m surprised! But I’m not the only person who’s worked on a lot of the things mentioned - I feel that I’ve accepted this Award on behalf of the many people that I’ve worked with on the EU Code of Conduct and CEEDA. And from the point of view of the BCS, the people that take my theoretical work and make it something real in data centres make an equally important contribution to this industry.”

Headline sponsors Mercury Engineering presented the European Data Centre Business Leader of the Year Award to Paul Flatt, Group Chairman of M&E consultants, hurleypalmerflatt. Paul has transformed his company from a regional building services practice into an international multi-disciplinary consultancy; today the largest privately owned engineering consultancy in the UK. He has led the business through a phase of significant international growth, winning a top ten place in the 2010 Sunday Times HSBC International Track 100 for fastest export growth. With 14 offices in Europe, Asia, and North America, his company serves some of the largest data centre operators in the world with innovative engineering solutions, through a team of highly regarded experts.

Paul Flatt said, “I’m amazed to get this award. Our success at hurleypalmerflatt is based on two factors, we do our research and we employ the best people. A lot of people underestimate the complexity of getting a data centre built, from planning regulations to construction and commissioning. From the sheer number of people with different objectives involved. We make it easy for our customers to succeed; we always tell them the truth and never underestimate the difficulty of meeting their objectives.”

The Future Thinking & Design Concepts Award, sponsored by Schneider Electric , was awarded to British company, Excool, for its indirect adiabatic cooling system. The system, which can be used anywhere in the world, harnesses the cooling effect of air and water for a sustainable and renewable approach to data centre cooling also minimising the use of electrical energy for operation.

The Data Center Blueprints Award, sponsored by Citadel 100, was awarded to UK data centre developer Infinity SDC for its data centre “Blueprint for High Resilience with Optimal Efficiency in the Urban Environment.”

Recognising the best response to the challenges of space, power and cooling utilisation in facilities up to 250kW, the Innovation in the Micro-Data centre Award, sponsored by JCA Group , went to Dutch cable operator Ziggo for its “Beauty Outside and Green Inside” (BoGi) efficient micro-data centres which are located in parks throughout the Netherlands to provide internet telephone and television services to consumers and companies.

The Innovation in the Medium-Data centre Award, sponsored by MPL Sales, went to Megatron for it’s Green Data Park, Centurian. This is the first ever Data Centre Leaders Award winner from Africa.

The Innovation in the Mega-Data centre Award, sponsored by Hitachi , recognises the flagship facilities which demonstrate best practice and leadership as well as future directions in the sector. This year’s award went to Linxdatacenter for its 12MW data centre in St Petersburg, Russia. The tier 3 facility includes state-of-the-art power, cooling, construction and security practices as well as an innovative power and cooling design.

The Leadership in the Public Sector Award, sponsored by Rittal was awarded to Leicester University, partnered by Keysource, for its high performance computing data centre project to improve service capability and efficiency through centralisation, supporting research at the establishment.

The Innovations in Outsourcing Award, sponsored by Norland Managed Services, was made to Adapt for its Adapt Enterprise Virtual Data Centre, a production grade platform for the delivery of virtual infrastructure.

Sponsored by Siemens , the Green Data Centre Award went to Datacenter Oostkamp for DCO₂, a green data centre with a PUE of 1.06. The facility includes a solar roof and a 4000m³ water buffer in a reservoir beneath the data halls which can be drawn upon to provide cooling resilience.

The Improved Data Centre Energy Efficiency Award was sponsored by the Green Grid and awarded to Six Degrees for its retro-fit, direct fresh air cooling solution which is backed by a DX system. The fresh air cooling operates for 95% of the time and has reduced the company’s cooling energy requirements by 90%.

The Innovation in IT Optimisation Award is sponsored by Colt went to F5 Rackspace for its hybrid cloud offering with BIG IP Local Traffic Manager. F5 technology has enabled the linking of dedicated servers to cloud servers, so that Rackpace is able to offer its customers the opportunity to move to the cloud incrementally, rather than take one large and potentially expensive step.

The Most Extreme Data Centre Deployment Award, sponsored by Virtus, and went to IO Datacenters for their Datacenter 2.0 modular platform which allows companies to control and consume data centre infrastructure on an “as needs” basis, providing greater efficiency and utilisation.

The Young Mission Critical Engineer of the Year Award, sponsored by Red Engineering, was awarded to Zac Potts, a 24 year-old research and development/ engineering specialist in the data centre division at Sudlows Limited.

The Data Centre ’Special Assignment’ Team of the Year Award, sponsored by CBRE, recognised the  VISA Europe Project Torch team, led by Mike Hall, senior facilities manager

For more details about the awards presentation, please visit the Datacentre Leaders Awards website or contact DatacenterDynamics on 0207 426 4815.