The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), the leading association representing the manufacturers and suppliers of high-tech communications networks, today announced a new industry scheme to provide official auditing and certification to data centers conforming with the ANSI/TIA 942 standard.
"ANSI/TIA-942 is perhaps the most popular true standard in the world for data centers," said TIA CEO Wes Johnston. "It is one of TIA's most popular standards and it is constantly evolving to match today's data center design requirements, including new technologies and design principles. We are delighted to now have an official scheme to verify conformance to this standard."
"With this official recognition by the TIA, data centers operators can now demonstrate, to both internal and external end users, that their data center has been independently audited to meet the target resilience rating required by their business," said Harry Smeenk, Senior Vice President for Technology Programs at TIA.
The new certification scheme will establish conformity assessment bodies (CABs) deemed competent to verify data center conformity with the standard. Recognizing the benefits of implementing a sound quality management system for audits and certification in addition to the technical requirements, TIA has selected Certac to provide verification of conformance to standards by independent third-party CABs and accreditation of participant CABs.
"We are very excited to work with TIA as their global operations partner supporting the accreditation of the TIA-942 Scheme and CABs," said May Cheow, Program Manager at Certac. "The official TIA scheme will ensure that strict quality standards are applied to anybody authorized by TIA to participate in the scheme."
"We applaud this move by TIA," said Edward van Leent, Chairman & CEO of EPI Group of Companies and by far the largest ANSI/TIA-942 audit & certification body globally. "We have seen a number of Enterprise and Commercial Data Centers who have fallen victim to subpar and non-accredited or registered organizations performing audits leaving the customer at great risk. This official scheme will ensure that only competent organizations will be allowed to perform audits reducing business risk and protecting the investment of the customer."
TIA's voluntary and industry-driven standards establish protocols that ensure reliable, quality communications networks and services. They are broadly used by the information communication technology community.
ANSI/TIA-942 covers the telecommunications infrastructure and all other aspects of a mission-critical data center, such as the site location, architectural and physical structure of the building, electrical and mechanical infrastructure, fire safety and physical security.
Within this new certification scheme, CABs will be accredited through the independent evaluation of an organization against recognized standards to ensure their impartiality, competence, and consistency. The accreditation process established for this scheme relies on a uniform approach accepted and implemented around the world to determine the competence of an organization. Details of the application process can be found at; https://certac.org/.../Application-Screening-Process.
Including accreditation for certification as part of the TIA scheme provides assurance of the impartiality and competence of the CABs. It also provides data center operator/owners the assurance that registered CABs are authorized by TIA to perform such audits. A list of registered CABs is published at http://www.tia-942.org. Companies desiring to become a third-party CAB should
