Data Center Maturity Model Whitepaper – The Green Grid

The Green Grid (TGG)have released their Data Center Maturity Model (DCMM) Whitepaper. Last year TGG put a lot of work into defining a model for Data Center efficiency and sustainability which would be of use to companies wishing to improve both. The DCMM covers all the main areas of the data centre. It includes power, cooling, computing, storage and network, and provides descriptions of levels of maturity within each area, rather than the more prescriptive ‘here’s what your data centre should look like’ approach.
So as a data centre operator you can benchmark your current performance against the model, but you can also see how to achieve the next level of maturity. The paper brings together the collective experience of the TGG task force and the wider TGG membership, including members’ involvement in other organizations and initiatives around the world.
The model works on five levels of maturity:
Levels of Data Center Maturity
Level 0: Minimal/No Progress
Level 1: Part Best Practice
Level 2: Best Practice
Levels 3 and 4: Reasonable Steps (between current best practices and the visionary five-year projection)
Level 5: Visionary – Five Years Away
So level 0 is a data center which has taken no efficiency improvement measures, and 5 is the Holy Grail. Levels 3 through 5 represent future capabilities toward which the industry should collectively move and innovate. TGG reckon that an ‘optimistic—but by no means prescriptive’ timetable for achieving Level 5 maturity is five years.
I think that this approach is a winner, in that it simply provides a yardstick with which to measure progress, unlike other ‘Codes of conduct’ or rule sets which can sometimes end up as counter productive millstones around the neck..