The ICT industry is undergoing an exciting and historic
transition characterized by big data, digitization, and
network convergence that is impacting and potentially
stressing the traditional data center. To keep the ICT
community current with technology and trends, a new
subcommittee of the BICSI Standards Committee was
established in the fall of 2015 to develop a Data Center
Operations standard, vital to meeting the reliability
and performance needs of today’s data centers.
After 3 1/2 years in development, BICSI 009-2019,
Data Center Operations and Maintenance Best Practices
was published on May 1, 2019. Development and several
technical reviews of this standard were completed by
127 industry participants from 17 countries across five
continents. These individuals represented a mix of data
center managers, operations personnel, consultants, and
vendors that provide products specifically to the data
center industry. It was truly the result of collaboration
from industry experts around the world. This endeavor
required an extra level of commitment from participants
outside North and South America, as they made themselves
available in the middle of the night, early morning
or late evening to participate in conference calls.
30 I ICT TODAY
WHAT IS A STANDARD?
Since the data center industry has an abundance of
proprietary guidelines published by vendors selling
products or services, it is important to understand what
is required for a document to be considered a standard.
For example, the American National Standards Institute
(ANSI) has established requirements which an
organization’s processes must meet when developing
documents for consideration as an ANSI standard.1
Some of ANSI’s requirements include:
• Openness: Participation shall be open to all
persons who are directly and materially affected
by the activity in question.
• Lack of dominance: The standards development
process shall not be dominated by any single
interest category, individual or organization.
• Balance: The standards development process should
have a balance of interests. Participants from diverse
interest categories shall be sought with the objective
of achieving balance.
DISCOVER THE NEW
BICSI 009-2019
DATA CENTER
OPERATIONS
STANDARD
By Phil Isaak, PE, P.Eng.,
RCDD, DCDC, SMIEEE