FMJ.CO.UK UNDER LOCK AND KEY CASE STUDY
MARCH 2021 25
relationship building is an important part of
a supplier/client success, which is why, when
he joined Keysource he developed the skill
sets of the team to take a problem solving,
customer facing approach.
“In my team, when we are interviewing
for di erent roles, someone may apply for a
specific role, but we are more interested in
what they enjoy doing and what they don’t.
This is because, being a multi-skilled team,
we can o er varied roles which results in
people who feel good about what they do
and invariably do a better job.
“Our goal with our people is to help
them find that niche job, as they’ll grow
into certain areas and be happy to come
to work because they enjoy what they
do. As a result, of the 22 people in the
team and the four seconded we have
insignificant sick and attrition rates
as our people are happy to come to
work.”
ENERGY MANAGEMENT
One of the key challenges of running
a data centre is in ensuring business
continuity. This includes managing the
amount of power it can draw on to maintain
resilience. A recent report, Mission Critical:
Power resilience, competitiveness and
sustainability in European Data Centres;
found that more than half (55 per cent) of
those surveyed expressed at least some
concern about the capabilities of their local
grid and energy infrastructure’s ability to
meet current energy demand.
Energy management is one of the reasons
why a data centre’s PUE (Power Usage
E iciency) is so critical, not only to reduce
energy costs but help ensure data resilience.
PUE is an international standard that
measures the ratio of the energy
used by the IT equipment to the
energy used by the entire data
centre.
Explains Scott: “You want to
get the PUE number as low as
you possibly can, and while
five years ago datacentres
were running at a PUE of up
to 7.0, they’re now running
at around 1.5. This means
older data centres may not be that e icient.”
The relationship with the Police Service
began with a Smart Hands technical support
service for online support. But explains Scott:
“When I realised our client had a dispersed
infrastructure, many in old stations, I wanted
to try and understand more about what they
had in place and o er them a service to help
streamline the rest of their estate.
“This resulted in our carrying out a
range of projects with them and winning
an additional contract to manage their
technical equipment rooms.”
SERVICE DELIVERY
Scott and his team visited hundreds of data
centre rooms, where he found that a lot of
IT was turned on that was not actually being
used any more but was still drawing on
cooling and power.
He says: “There were approximately 800
data centre rooms in about 400 buildings and
over many years people had been operating
in uncontrolled environments; for instance
putting in IT to run a project and leaving it
there at the end. They were even using some
as storerooms and drying coats in there
during the winter. The Police Service have
other high priorities so we were happy to
help them in understanding IT and risk.”
He explains they presented three
alternatives for the equipment in a neglected
IT environment:
If it isn’t required, decommission it, thereby
saving power and space and creating much
needed capacity for the Police O icers
If it is required, transition it on to the cloud
or into one on the customer’s secure and well
managed datacentres
If the IT and service was required to remain
on site, help them create an e icient secure
and modular environment as part of an
overall renovation project.
He explains: “We’re very much aimed at
delivering what is best for our customer. We
are not trying to sell them the latest gadgets
or services that may not be aligned to their
strategy, we are interested in advising and
Energy management is
one of the reasons why a data
centre’s PUE (Power Usage
Effi ciency) is so critical, not only
to reduce energy costs but
help ensure data
resilience.”