In this world, lots of data centers exist. There are some big international well-known firms, big local/national firms and the smaller independent ones. A variety of choices are made in gaining trust. Some collect dozens of certifications and others show their proven track record. Why should you trust ‘just a certificate’ over a brand with a proven track record?
Let’s start by stating that a part of risk identification has a basis in factual research. How often did a specific event happen in the past? Information about experiencing emergent events and knowing the frequency over time can be very relevant to form an opinion on reliability. Therefore, a proven track record can be valuable. To make sure risk will not be engaged with luck, a reasonable number of events need to be part of the research to determine whether proven track-record shows if common risks are well mitigated.
On the other hand, we can use certification to gain trust in a company’s reliability. The benefit of using a certification body is the knowledge and information that is gained from multiple specialists and different companies worldwide. The amount of data used to determine risks is much higher and therefore the outcome of the risks identified is much more valuable than the data from one place or one brand. Also, knowledge of mitigation solutions can be shared and reviewed. Given that most certifications need to be reviewed or reperformed periodically to include all recent knowledge, using certification to gain trust in a company is theoretically the preferred one.
Certifications and track records also both have a downside. When looking at certifications, lots of different certifications exist and the meaning of them is not always clear. Besides, it depends on the certification body whether a certificate can be provided by anyone or just a couple of trusted companies. Also, it is hard to determine if a certificate is legit. When gaining trust by certifications it is really necessary to determine whether an independent auditor was a part of the audit and read about a way to determine whether a certificate is legit. You need to have trust in the framework, the certification body, and the auditors before you can gain trust from a certificate.
On the other hand, you can gain trust by a proven track record. Then you need to question yourself if you gain trust from the track record of the brand or only that facility? Reason for questioning, if a facility was part of a merger/acquisition it does not have to prove anything about the infrastructure quality of the brand. Besides, if a brand has limited facilities the track record can be based on luck and can be impacted on events that others were aware of.
It is easy to conclude that it’s best to choose for certification and track record. Unfortunately, it will limit since lots of facilities cannot provide both. Thinking about the law of large numbers, relying on appropriate certification may seem to be best.
Datacenter.com has chosen to opt for certification by Uptime Institute. Uptime Institute is a company with lots of experience in the data center branch and over 25 years of research experience. Certification by Uptime means periodic review. Using the latest information from their experience. With this certificate, Datacenter.com shows that it complies with the knowledge of international experts with lots of experience.