This is a bit of 'breaking news' I got from Techtarget today: The Uptime Institute has drawn up a new metric to measure the ability of a data center to keep running without interruption. Called the Operational Sustainability benchmark, it is to published on 1 July.

We know the Uptime Institute for their Tiering standard. The tiering is, well, an indication of availability. However, Tiering has an important drawback: it is mostly a ranking system, an inflexible one with that. Still, the higher the tier, the better the expected uptime.

The new Operational Sustainability benchmark works radically different, and is markedly separate to the Tiering system. The higher the score, the higher, uhm, the better the expected uptime. In all seriousness, there is an important difference between the two: Tiering is solely concerned with the physical facility itself. Many things that could influence uptime just as well are simply cast aside. As Paul Peoples, an IT executive at a large retailer said to Techtarget: "Anybody can buy a data center. You can hire an engineering firm to design and
commission the facility, but once you turn it over to operations, there
is no standard to judge the performance." In other words, even the best facility will not do much without things like properly trained staff and reliable service.

That is where this benchmark comes in. It also prioritises those elements. That way, "Site personnel will be equipped with a tool to address the most imminent risks to their operation. This works to ensure the best use of
resources available to the owner," Julian Kudritzki, the Uptime Institute's VP of professional services says.

The Uptime's Institute's staunchest critic, Mike Manos of Nokia, takes a sceptical wait-and-see approach. "It's going to be difficult for Uptime to make headway, but I wish them the best of luck."