Nominations for the annual international Datacentre and Cloud Awards are due to close March 31st.
Now in its 6th year, and with an extended panel of expert Judges the Awards provide exceptional marketing differentiation for both winners and shortlisted companies, and is the only international for the sector.
New Judges who have joined the expert panel include Richard Hall, chief executive and founder, CloudOrigin; Vijay Mistry, Executive Director and Head of Enterprise Datacenters EMEA, Morgan Stanley; Hakeeret Singh, Energy Czar, Thompson Reuters; Richard Sealy, co-founder and managing director, Glowfori SA; and Dean Nelson, vice president Global Foundation Services, eBay.
This year’s categories are designed to reflect changes in markets and technologies, but retain their focus on recognising excellence across the datacentre and cloud sector:
Public and Private Cloud services and Infrastructure, assessing how customers are managed, scaleability, charging models and unique service differentiators.
The industry is under increasing challenges to ensure Energy Efficiency and Environment Sustainability, which is at the core of datacentre design and most critically during the lifecycle operation. As one of the most sought after award categories, and with the added dimension of environmental sustainability, the Award will seek an exemplar to the datacentre industry of energy efficiency innovation.
The Award for Colocation is seeking operators who achieve differentiation through technical innovation, commercial or service and product offering an extra dimension beyond the specification of the facility itself. The award will be given for the best operator in the marketplace.
In a new category for 2013, an Award will be given for Best Practice in Datacentre Retrofit over the past 12 months.
The New Datacentre Award will again feature, for either commercial (co-location, hosting, managed services) or enterprise of any size, which has been deployed in the past 12 months.
Managed Services forms a key offering in the Hosting community. Service Providers scale many solutions – from generic services to dedicated ICT offerings and equally differ from SME to Large scale services integrator. The Award aims to demonstrate where service providers have brought an extra dimension to the global managed services marketplace.
A further new category announced is for Datacentre Operational Excellence. It recognizes the philosophy of organizational leadership that stresses the application of a variety of principles, work processes, and tools toward the sustainable improvement of data centre key performance metrics (IT and/or Facilities) in combination with lower operating expense.
The Modular Award is expected to be extremely competitive as adoption and deployment is sustained. The Judges will assess key performance metrics, implementation costs, level of customization, carbon, energy efficiency and other characteristics.
The Judges are this year seeking to identify an Entrepreneur in the Datacentre or Cloud sector. Whether private, public or equity backed, the Award recognizes the passion and drive that underlies business success.
As the datacentre industry expands globally, the Award for CxO will honour inspirational leadership with achievement in marketing flair, commercial success, significant business growth, and uniqueness in approach.
The Judges are also pleased to announce a new Award for Young Talent associated with the Datacentre Industry. This award will recognise a young individual who during the past 12 months deserves singular recognition in regards to their impact on their organisation, their sector and/or the industry.
Finally, the Judges Award will recognise an Individual or organisation whose contribution during the past 12 months has been outstanding.
“This year’s Awards will be highly competitive, as the industry seeks to distinguish excellence in a highly competitive marketplace,” commented Ashley Davis, chairman of the panel of Judges. “The expanded panel will enable each Award to be evaluated individually, and will also bring new expertise and insight. 2013 looks set to be another tremendous opportunity for the sector.”
The black-tie Awards ceremony and dinner will be held in London at One Whitehall Place on the evening of June 13th.
Kaynak : 