DatacenterDynamics has announced the results of the first round of judging for its new awards for the Asia Pacific region - the 2014 DatacenterDynamics APAC Awards.

The awards – taking place on October 17 at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Center- recognize innovation, leadership and ‘out of the box’ thinking in the data center industry across the APAC region.

Over 250 senior industry professionals are expected to attend the highly-anticipated and prestigious Gala Award ceremony to celebrate excellence across the data center industry and mark the end of the inaugural Singapore Data Center Week (SDCW).

SDCW provides a networking platform for the local and regional data center audience from October 13 to 17 in Singapore to share the latest industry thinking, highlight success stories and address key issues within the data center industry.

The 2014 APAC Awards, previously known as the DatacenterDynamics Greater China Awards, the company expanded the Award program to allow entrants from across the APAC region.


DatacenterDynamics CTO and managing director Stephen Worn with last year’s Innovation in the Mega Data Center winners NTT Communications

The awards have received an overwhelming number of high-quality submissions including government organizations and global brands with data centers located in APAC, these have been whittled down to four finalists per category.

DatacenterDynamics appointed a panel of 40 independent, experienced subject matter experts and data center practitioners to judge the 2014 DatacenterDynamics APAC Awards.

Key members of the judging panel include Ramesh Narayanaswamy, Group CIO, SingPost, Jonathan Leung, Senior VP and Head of Hosting Services, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited, Ken Liu, DSCO, Dave Ng, Principal Advisor, TAC Advisory, Ed Ansett, Managing Partner, i3 Solutions

Judging criteria across Awards address the business and industry significance of the challenge addressed by the concept, creativity and innovation, effectiveness, and relevance to the wider industry challenges.

The finalists have been chosen from a number of countries within the APAC region including Australia, Indonesia, Singapore and Japan.

All finalists will have the opportunity to present their projects to the four judges via video conferencing, entries will be re-scored based on the presentation, after which a winner is determined.

The 2014 APAC Awards program consists of ten categories:

Headline sponsor: SingTel

Future Thinking and Design Concepts
Sponsor: ABB
Behind every definitive product or solution is a great idea. This Award is about recognizing the innovation and thinking that is shaping the next generation of cutting edge data center solutions. With the challenges confronting the industry now moving quicker and hitting harder than ever before, so the solutions developed in response need to raise the bar continually in terms of innovation, ease of deployment and ‘real world’ application.

Innovation in the Micro Data Center
Sponsor: i3 Solutions
Small may be beautiful, but the design and operation of data centers of up to 250 KW brings with it particular challenges of space utilization, power distribution and backup, cooling, access and security. Most micro data centers are situated in buildings designed primarily for purposes other than housing IT, and this accentuates the challenges of designing and operating the micro-data center.

Innovation in the Medium Data Center
Sponsor: M+W Group
The efficient design and operation of ‘medium’ data centers - between 250kW and 2.5MW in total facility power requirements – feature challenges of design, operation and optimization. While market attention has traditionally been focused on very large, flagship projects, the medium data center is the principal IT facility for many organizations and therefore the core of their mission-critical business.

Innovation in the Mega Data Center

Sponsor: Emerson Network Power
The mega-data center (a facility of over 2.5MW in total facility energy demand) is the landmark that sustains today’s technology-driven world. Each enables a quantity of transactions, storage and IT application that make possible many business and life activities. Market attention has traditionally been focused on very large, flagship projects as indicating future directions in best practice and leadership in the data center sector. Always newsworthy and occasionally controversial, the mega-data center brings with it unique challenges. Mission-critical issues of availability, efficiency, redundancy and scalability take on a higher risk profile in the largest facilities. What may constitute a glitch in a smaller facility can magnify exponentially in a mega-data center.

Innovations in Outsourcing
Sponsor: Norland
The increasing need for organizations to look more closely at which parts of their IT they need to keep in-house and which parts they can outsource has combined with advances in both facility design and cloud-based technologies to revolutionize outsourcing services. This Award seeks to underline the importance of the cluster of services that constitute the outsourcing sector not just in offering space, facility or management options to clients but in advancing outsourcing services through the understanding of market business requirements, their ability to present the best business case for outsourcing and through the development of services that meet the expectations that clients have of outsourcing services.

The Green Data Center
Sponsor: Huawei
The motivation behind the ‘green’ data center needs little introduction. The ‘perfect storm’ of energy scarcity, energy cost, legislation and the need for strong, corporate leadership have accelerated the drive towards sustainability in the data center. This Award will recognize the reality of designing and operating data centers in the context of environmental scrutiny and to celebrate the success of those who have managed to balance their established responsibilities in providing a resilient and responsive facility with the consideration of wider corporate, sustainability and environmental responsibility. Those, in short, who have seen increasing pressures of power costs, regulation, community and environmental responsibility as an opportunity rather than a problem and have demonstrated their vision of sustainability as a critical driver in the design and operation of their data facilities.

Improved Data Center Energy Efficiency
Sponsor: Digital Realty
The current drive towards greater energy efficiency in the data center industry will put additional pressure on owners and operators to bring their existing facilities up to scratch, in particular those facilities designed and fitted before power consumption became a critical issue. Since it is not possible to manage what isn’t measured, the focus on energy efficiency has gone hand in hand with the evolution of metrics with which to measure such efficiency and its trends within a facility over time. This Award seeks to recognize the journey that individual organizations have undergone in order to bring existing facilities up to scratch through the process of measurement, benchmarking, analysis, recommendation and implementation.

Innovation in IT Optimization
The opportunity presented by IT optimization can be challenging yet advantageous to realize. Such is the impact of the wide and disparate range of corporate, IT and facility processes covered by IT optimization that it has blown away the legacy view of the data center ‘as simply a facility’ to one based on that of the data center being a critical unit within a dynamic, networked and strategically-driven business critical function. This Award seeks to recognize and reward true innovation in IT optimization that has enabled organizations to successfully redefine the role that the data center performs within their corporate and IT strategy.

Data Center Special Assignment Team of the Year
Sponsor: DCProfessional Development
All of what happens inside the data center depends directly or indirectly upon the people charged with design, operation and management and since the data center professional is rarely working in isolation, this places an added premium upon the capability of the data center operator to develop, manage and motivate effective teams to carry the operation forward. This Award seeks to recognize team achievement where the team has been convened for a special purpose or task above and beyond everyday duties. This may be at any stage of the ‘strategizing’, design, construction, fit out, operation, refit or decommissioning of a data center just so long as it represents a ‘special assignment or series of activities’ in the life of the data center.

Outstanding Contribution to the Industry
Sponsor: Rittal
The exceptional recent growth and increasing maturity of the data center industry has created the need to recognize those people who have helped shape the industry of today and will lead it towards the industry of tomorrow. This Award will continue our recognition of industry leadership and to reward innovation that has influenced the mainstream of data center practice, whether it be in design, thought leadership, management, operational strategy, engineering development and application or a combination of these.

To view the finalists for the 2014 DatacenterDynamics 2014 APAC Awards click here.