UL, formerly known as Underwriters Laboratories, has made IO.Anywhere by Phoenix-based IO the first product to receive certification under its brand-new safety standard for modular data centers.

UL is a non-profit company that devises safety standards for products and certifies products that fit the standards’ criteria. It has standards for the appliance, food, lighting, building materials, health-sciences, energy, high-tech and other industries.

IO provides data center services out of multiple data centers, leasing space inside the IO.Anywhere modules it designed in house, as well as leasing traditional data center space and providing power, cooling and network infrastructure.

For IO, creation of the standard is another step toward the company’s vision of a world of standardized data centers, where they are no longer custom designed.

Andreas Zoll, VP of engineering and product development at IO, said the new standard would help eventually “make the data center infrastructure a non-issue. Make it an item that you pick in a catalogue, put in a purchase order and … purchase it as a commodity item.”

The new standard makes the data center purchase decision easier, Zoll said. “Our goal is to have clear standards in the data center market place that are recognized by the customer base.”

IO took part in development of the standard together with other data center operators Zoll declined to name. When IO got involved, the project was already in progress, but the company needed to add to the discussion as it had mostly, at that time, revolved around containerized data centers.

While there are modular data centers that are fitted inside shipping containers, IO’s modules are not in standard shipping containers and neither are several other vendors’ modules.

The standard – UL 2755 – was releases several months ago.