Whenever the topic of standards and their corresponding compliance comes up, businesses are afraid of strict requirements. This issue is especially true when we speak about industries that previously were not following a specific standard. An introduction of a new standard makes business operators nervous about their alignment and whether or not they need to make adjustments to comply. The data center industry was historically until 2013 faced with the issue, that they had no official guidelines or standards that define what measures data center operators need to implement for their availability, physical security and sustainability.

The EN 50600 (for more general information about the EN 50600, you can download TuVit's previous whitepaper: What you need to know about the EN 50600) was the first official European standard that addressed the design, construction and operation of data centers in terms of their availability, physical security and sustainability. This whitepaper deals with EN 50600 2-1, which defines requirements for data center construction, and the corresponding business risk analysis, with the aim to highlight the EN 50600 ambivalent nature regarding strictness and room for flexibility.